With a showman’s flair and a criminal’s moustache, a Pakistani gangster calls a hotline with the news he most wants – taunting the authorities who put a bounty on his head.
Looking through the lens in a social media clip, Shahid Lund Baloch challenged the officer on the phone and thousands of viewers: “Do you know my situation or my reason for taking up arms?”
The 28-year-old is hiding in the riverine terrain of central Punjab that has long provided shelter to bandits – using the Internet to attract the attention of citizens even as he preys, police said. On TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, he attracted tens of thousands of hand-delivered messages, romanticizing rural lifestyles and developing a reputation as a champion of the people. But he is wanted for 28 cases including murder, kidnapping and assault on the police – with a price of 10 million (Pakistan) on his head.
“People sitting outside think they are heroes, but people here know they are not heroes,” said Javed Dhillon, a former member of parliament for the Rahim Yar Khan district close to where the Baloch, and other bandits like him, are hiding .
“He has always accepted cruelty and violence.”
Backwater with bandwidth
The Baloch are said to live on sand islands in the “land of Katcha” – roughly translated as “backwaters” – on the Indus River that pierces Pakistan from top to bottom.
Tall vegetation provides cover for ambushes and the area is separated by seasonally moving waterways that complicate the pursuit of crimes ranging from kidnapping to street robbery and smuggling. At the crossroads of three of Pakistan’s four provinces, gangs with hundreds of members have for decades taken advantage of poor coordination between police forces by running across jurisdictions.
“The natural features of this land support criminals,” said senior police officer Naveed Wahla. “They will hide in water turbines, move in boats, or through sugarcane.”
A sweeping police operation and even an Army strike in 2016 failed to restore law and order. This August, a rocket attack on a police convoy killed 12 officers.
“In the current situation here there is only fear and terror,” said Haq Nawaz, whose adult son was kidnapped in late September for an unaffordable ransom of five million rupees. “No one cares about our welfare,” he complained.
But my gang is online.
Some use the web to lay “honey-traps” luring kidnapping victims by impersonating romantic suitors, business partners and advertising cheap sales of tractors or cars.
Some parade hostages in clips for ransom or show off their arsenal of heavy weapons in music TikToks.
Baloch has the biggest online profile – the angry cop with a combined 2,00,000 followers.
Media savvy people
Rizwan Gondal, Rahim Yar Khan district police chief, said detectives had documents proving “bad criminal activity”. “The police have made several attempts to arrest him, but he managed to escape,” he said.
“He’s a media savvy guy. Let him say, ‘I’m going to surrender to the state to prove my innocence’ and let the media cover it up.”
In the clip Baloch denied his innocence as he considered himself a vigilante in a lawless country, claiming that he chose to fight only after family members were killed in tribal clashes.
“We could not get justice from the court, so I decided to take up arms and start fighting with my enemies,” Baloch said. “They kill our people, we kill them.”
But he also plays a cycle of neglect of the state which breeds banditry and one relegates the poor farming community to the fringes of society.
In the comments section, viewers called him “the bandit’s beloved brother” and “a real hero”. “You have won my heart,” said another.
“He is popular in the mainstream because he gives the police authorities a hard time,” says former MP Dhillon.
Robbed of followers
The police have proposed countering the bandits by downgrading mobile phone towers to 2G, preventing social media apps from loading. That has not happened and will risk cutting the community further.
But more low-tech solutions have succeeded.
An anti-honey trap police cell warned residents against the gang with the help of billboards and loudspeakers at checkpoints entering the area, preventing 531 people from falling prey since last August, according to the data.
Baloch taunted the police. But one problem plaguing the bid for online stardom is attention.
Copycat’s social media account pretends to be him and shares duplicate videos — getting thousands of followers and more views than the legitimate account.
He felt robbed. “I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve,” he complained.
But to the police, his internet hero status doesn’t match the number of his crimes.
“People will assume Shahid Lund Baloch, but when he is finally kidnapped, they will know who Shahid Lund Baloch really is,” said a senior Wahla official.
Published – 02 November 2024 11:26 IST
