Fears that BBC reporter was abducted

A global media rights group expressed concern that a missing Pakistani journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation may have been abducted.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan government said today that there has been no word on the reporter’s whereabouts.

Dilawar Khan Wazir, who is in his 30s and works for the BBC’s Urdu-language service, went missing yesterday after leaving Islamabad for Dera Ismail Khan, the city where he lived in the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, the BBC said on its Urdu-language news website.

The Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, said that it was “deeply concerned” about Wazir’s disappearance and said he may have been kidnapped.

“The circumstances of his disappearance lead us to fear he was abducted. We fear he could be the latest victim of kidnappings of reporters” in Pakistan, the statement said.

The group did not say who may have abducted Wazir or why but it cited the case of Hayatullah Khan, another journalist, who had been kidnapped in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region and murdered earlier this year.

“The Pakistani authorities must do their utmost to shed light on the disappearance of Dilawar Khan,” the group said in a statement.