The bullet-ridden body of missing Pakistani journalist Javed Naseer Rind was found on Wednesday near Khuzdar, in the federal province of Balochistan, Pakistani media reported.

Reportedly in his mid-twenties, Mr. Rind was a sub-editor and respected columnist at the Daily Tawar, a local Urdu-language paper. He was abducted on 10 September by unidentified men from the industrial town of Hub Chowki, outside Karachi.

Doctors at Civil Hospital Khuzdar, where Mr. Rind’s body was transported by police, were quoted by multiple news outlets as stating that the “victim was shot in the head and the bullet had passed through the skull … [and] the body bore multiple marks of brutal torture”.

The Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ) has condemned the kidnapping and brutal murder of Mr. Rind and called on authorities to fully investigate the incident. Local media said that relatives of Mr. Rind had alleged that Pakistani intelligence agents were complicit in his killing.

While a firm connection between Mr. Rind’s journalistic activity and his murder has not been established, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reported that Mr. Rind was a member of the pro-independence Baloch National Movement (BNM).  Baloch nationalists have intermittently waged a violent separatist campaign against the government in Islamabad since the creation of the Pakistani state in 1947.

Attacks and threats against the Daily Tawar, which is viewed as aligned with the Baluch nationalist movement, have been on the rise this year. The similarly tortured, bullet-ridden body of Rehmatullah Shaheen, a poet and Daily Tawar correspondent, was found in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital and largest city, on 1 April. In May the offices of the Daily Tawar in Hub Chowki were set ablaze, apparently by members of a political party opposed to Baluch secession. Last month, the Daily Tawar was forced to cease publication in Quetta, apparently after repeated threats from Pakistani intelligence agents.

The International Press Institute (IPI) joins the BUJ in condemning the brutal killing of Mr. Rind in the strongest terms possible.  IPI Executive Director Alison Bethel McKenzie said, “We are shocked and saddened by the death of Mr. Rind and we extend our deepest sympathies to his family and his colleagues at the Daily Tawar. We urge the Pakistani authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into this act and into all other unresolved cases of kidnapped and murdered journalists in the country.”

Pakistan is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.  According to IPI’s Death Watch, Mr. Rind is the seventh journalist to have been killed so far this year in Pakistan.