The New York-based Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has urged Pakistan to release Dr Mahrang Baloch and provide her with medical care, describing the terrorism charges against the Baloch rights campaigner as politically motivated. The Frontier Record reported the foundation's call, issued ahead of the International Day of Political Prisoners on 30 October.

HRF said Mahrang, the chief organiser of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), was arrested in March 2025 during a peaceful sit-in and later prosecuted under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act. The foundation questioned whether she had received a fair trial, saying her hearings were held inside prison, she could take part only by video link, and journalists and independent observers were barred.

The foundation said it was concerned by reports that her health had worsened in custody, and it called on the international community to speak out about her imprisonment and the wider human-rights situation in Balochistan.

The HRF dispatch carried extracts from a letter in which Mahrang recalled visiting her father in Hudda Jail as a child, carrying Eid cards, and said his loss had shaped her work with families searching for missing relatives. "Yet imprisonment has not changed my convictions," she wrote, adding that her greatest concern was not when she would leave prison, but when families across Balochistan would no longer have to search for their disappeared loved ones. "Prisons may confine individuals," she added, "but they cannot permanently contain the desire for freedom, dignity, and justice."

On 22 June 2026, an anti-terrorism court in Quetta sentenced Mahrang and fellow BYC leader Sibghatullah Shahji to life imprisonment over the killing of Frontier Corps soldier Shabir Ahmed during a protest in Gwadar. Both deny the charges; their legal team has challenged the verdict, which the Balochistan government has defended as fair.