Multan (Pakistan) : The Nishtar Hospital here in Pakistan’s Punjab Province is in news for a sensational development — hundreds of bodies in mutilated condition being discovered from its roof top.
Going by the attire and the condition of the people whose remains have been found, it is strongly believed that they are the Baloch people who were illegally picked up by the Pakistani military and made victims of Enforced Disappearances over months and years.
Videos, showing the gory state of the bodies dumped in an inhumane manner, have gone viral on social media.
Some reports said the number of the dead bodies discoverd in pathetic state is around 500.
Several of the bodies seem to have been eaten by vultures and crows.
“The dead bodies discovered on the roof of Nishtar hospital in Multan and the condition and attire of these dead bodies and the way these are treated raise our concerns that these are dead bodies of forcibly Baloch disappeared persons,” Baloch National Movement (BNM) spokesperson Qazi Dad Mohammad Rehan said in a statement emailed to NVI.
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These bodies were identified by Tariq Gujjar, adviser to the Chief Minister of Punjab.
Rehan said an unusual number of dead bodies of unknown people are being recovered in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, where Baloch political prisoners were kept in torture cells in the past.
“In this month, the bodies of 168 unidentified people were found in Punjab (Pakistan). Those who were declared unknown persons and buried anonymously,” he added.
“We still fear that these bodies are from forcibly disappeared persons handed to the hospital to be used for medical students,” the BNM spokesman said, raising an extremely serious human rights question.
“The hospital administration has admitted that these bodies were handed over to the hospital administration by the Pakistani security forces, who could not keep them in the morgue due to injuries and were placed on the roof for putrefaction so that the flesh can be separated from the bones for the purpose of teaching the medical students,” he said.
The spokesman said discovery of such a large number of unidentified bodies is not a usual event to be ignored.
“So, the international community and human rights organizations should urge the government of Pakistan to do DNA test for identification of these bodies,” he said.
