ISLAMABAD: The family of a detained Pakistani Baloch rights activists, Dr. Mahrang Baloch, filed a petition in Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday, seeking to overturn a provincial court ruling that upheld her arrest under public order laws, according to a local media report.
Baloch, a physician and a civil society activists, has been held at Quetta’s Hudda District Jail since March 22 after she participated in protests following a separatist militant attack on a passenger train in Balochistan.
She was arrested under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law, a move her supporters described as part of a broader crackdown on nonviolent dissent in the restive province.
The petition, filed by her sister, argues that the detention is arbitrary and aimed at silencing peaceful activism.
“Nadia Baloch, the sister of Dr. Mahrang Baloch, urged the Supreme Court on Wednesday to set aside the April 15 order of the Balochistan High Court that rejected the plea against her detention under the Maintenance of Public Order,” the English-language newspaper Dawn quoted from the petition.
The detained activist, who leads the Baloch Yakjehti Committee, also published a letter from prison in the US-based Time magazine this week, in which she asserted that “speaking up for justice is not a crime.”
Pakistani authorities have accused Baloch of promoting the narrative of separatist groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) in public. However, her letter in the American magazine maintained the officials had not provided any evidence of her links with BLA or any other militant group while criticizing the authorities for blurring the line between militancy and peaceful protest.
Earlier this year, the Balochistan High Court dismissed Baloch’s initial challenge to her detention, advising her to seek administrative remedies instead of judicial relief.
Her sister’s petition has now asked the apex court to suspend that ruling and review whether constitutional protections such as habeas corpus were ignored in the previous judicial decision.
The Supreme Court has yet to announce when it will take up the case for hearing.
