Armed Men Abduct 20 Police Recruits Travelling Home From Kalat Training Centre

Armed men abducted 20 police recruits on October 17, 2026, after stopping a passenger van carrying them home on weekly leave from the Kalat Police Training Centre, a senior Balochistan government official and police officials in Mastung told Dawn. The Express Tribune reported the same abduction, citing officials who gave a near-identical account.

The recruits had taken the Sarband route between Kalat and Nushki, a shorter path than the main Quetta-Karachi Highway, when armed men surrounded their van. The attackers checked passengers inside the vehicle, separated the recruits, and released the driver and three other civilians a short distance away. The recruits and the van were then taken toward the Gargina-Kardgap area of Mastung district before being moved to an undisclosed location, officials said.

Who was taken

The 20 recruits were former members of the Levies Force who joined the police after the force's merger with the department, and were training at Kalat ahead of a posting in the Rakhshan Division. Officials said eight came from Kharan, five from Nushki, four from Chagai and three from Washuk. No group had claimed responsibility for the abduction at the time of publication, and security forces launched a search operation in the surrounding hills.

Part of a cluster of abductions in the same districts

The Mastung abduction follows three other incidents in the same stretch of Balochistan within the past two months. Rakhshan Division Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar was abducted in Kharan district a day earlier, on October 16. Kharan Deputy Commissioner Munir Ahmed Soomro was abducted in September on the Noshki-Kharan Highway and held for nearly two weeks before local tribal elders negotiated his release on October 3. In July, three excise officials were kidnapped in Chagai district after an attack on a checkpost. Officials have not linked the four incidents to a single group, and no claim of responsibility has followed any of them.

A pattern this site has tracked through the year

Government personnel and civilian workers have been abducted repeatedly across Balochistan's sparsely policed districts this year, including 12 construction workers taken from a camp in Duki in September and a separate hostage rescue operation in Kalat earlier in the year. The province has also seen large-scale security operations this autumn, including a 96-hour operation that the military said killed 71 militants. The same districts have hosted both large counter-militancy operations and a string of unclaimed abductions this year.

What happens next

Security forces have not said how many personnel are involved in the search operation around Kardgap, nor given a timeframe for recovering the 20 recruits. Past cases in the same districts, including the Kharan deputy commissioner's release after nearly two weeks of tribal mediation, suggest any resolution could take days rather than hours. Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk will update this report if officials confirm the recruits' recovery, a claim of responsibility, or new details on who carried out the abduction.

Build Better Pakistan's Security Desk is tracking the search operation in Mastung and Kalat districts.