Akbar Bugti buried in Dera Bugti by authorities, relatives not present

QUETTA: The body of Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti on Friday was buried by government official in his native Dera Bugti town in the absence of relatives and fellow tribesmen. The sons of former Governor and CM Balochistan had demanded to hand over the body in Quetta, but were turned down by the officials.The body was brought in a sealed coffin and no one was allowed to see
the body. Some tribesmen from the rival ranks of Bugti's tribe and officials attended the funeral. An Islamic cleric brought in by the
government conducted the funeral prayers. Earlier Bugti's body was retrieved from the cave in which he was killed
in a military action on August 26 and brought to a burial ground of the Dera Bugti by helicopter. As soon as it arrived, the funeral prayers were conducted and the body was buried. Besides the officials, security personnel and a small group of tribesmen the brief ceremony was witnessed by a group of media personnel taken by the Pakistan government from Quetta.
Jamhoori Watan Party Secretary General and Bugti's son-in-law Senator Agha Shahid Bugti said the family had asked the government to hand over the tribal leader's body for burial. "It is inhuman and unacceptable.  It is even un-Islamic to bury a person against the will of his family," he said before the funeral took place. He said it was only their right to decide a burial place for him. "Since our contact with the government, we have been insisting that the body should be handed to us, but now we have been told that the body has  been
taken to Dera Bugti. No one from our family will go to Dera Bugti to attend the burial. We still say that the body should be given to us,"
he said. "Since Bugti's two sons - Talal Akbar Bugti and Jamil Akbar Bugti - are alive and present in Quetta, why should his body be handed to his opponents," he asked. Agha Shahid Bugti said it was a widely held view in Balochistan that Nawab Bugti had died following a bitter shootout with military  personnel in the open. "And our suspicion is fuelled by the reluctance of the government to hand over the body of Nawab Bugti to his heirs. They fear that we will be able to find out exactly how they killed Nawab Bugti," he said. It is learnt that a decision was made by a Jirga of Bugti's opponents for not allowing more than two members of the bereaved family to attend the funeral.