Seventeen sugar mill workers still missing six days after DI Khan abduction

Seventeen employees of a sugar mill in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remain with their abductors six days after armed men stopped their staff bus on the Indus Highway, with police saying no recovery has been confirmed and no group having claimed responsibility.

According to police, the men, who include security guards and class-IV staff of Chashma Sugar Mill, were seized on the evening of 21 October inside the limits of Paroa police station as they travelled home after their shift.

Tariq Baloch, a clerk at the police station, said the mill's bus left for Dera Ismail Khan city every day after duty ended and dropped workers at villages along the route. On 21 October the bus was following the same routine when armed men intercepted it and took the 17 away at gunpoint, he said.

Baloch said some passengers on a second, passenger bus were also taken at the same spot but were released afterwards.

District Police Officer Ziauddin told Independent Urdu that efforts to recover the abducted men were continuing. No demands have been made public and no group has said it is holding the workers.

On Monday, relatives of the missing men and residents of the area blocked the Indus Highway to all traffic in protest at the delay, and called on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Faisal Karim Kundi to take steps for the workers' safe return.

Qari Mohiuddin, whose brother is among those abducted, told local media that no trace of the men had been found. He said Dera Ismail Khan is the governor's native district and that Kundi should push the recovery effort harder.

The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association condemned the abduction, calling it alarming, and said incidents of this kind create fear among people working in industrial units. In a statement, the association asked law enforcement agencies to speed up efforts to recover the workers safely and to investigate the case fully.

Chashma Sugar Mill is located in the Rammak area of Dera Ismail Khan and was established in 1988. It has a crushing capacity of about 18,000 metric tonnes of sugarcane a day and employs people from different parts of the district, who are taken home by the mill's buses after each shift.

The families remain anxious as the search enters a second week, with no verified information so far about who is holding the men or what they want.