But the man, who commanded the unquestionable loyalty of a well-armed Baloch tribe of around 2,50,000 people and went on to mentor the guerrilla Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), had his beginnings at the Lahore and Karachi Grammar School and Oxford University. Legend has it that he commited his first murder at the age of 12 and killed another 100 men to avenge the assassination of his son Salal Bugti.

When Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf threatened him, the man is known to have told the General: “I’ll give you a war you won’t forget and send you back to the barracks where you belong!” For more than a decade, he waged a shadow war against the Pakistan Army, from the mountain ranges of Dera Bugti.

In 1958, Bugti was elected in a by-election to the National Assembly of Pakistan to fill the vacancy created after the assassination of the incumbent Dr Khan Sahib and sat on the government benches as a member of the ruling coalition. He was minister of state (Interior) in the government of Prime Minister Feroz Khan Noon for a brief period in 1958 till the cabinet was dismissed on the declaration of martial law by President Iskander Mirza.

Bugti was arrested and convicted by a military tribunal in 1960 and disqualified from holding public office. So he did not contest the 1970 general elections but campaigned for his younger brother, Sardar Ahmed Nawaz Bugti, a candidate of the National Awami Party (NAP).

In the elections, the NAP and Jamiat-ul Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) secured majority of seats in Balochistan. In less than a year, however, the government under Chief Minister Sardar Attaullah Khan Mengal and governor Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, was dismissed by the federal government on the pretext, among several other charges, that it was receiving arms from foreign countries and preparing for rebellion or secession. The arms, allegedly meant for supply to Baloch separatists, were discovered in a raid on the Iraqi Embassy.

The news was carried by none other than Bugti, who was then siding with the federal government under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The next day, Bugti addressed a rally in Lahore against the intentions of the NAP-JUI alliance. His reward came soon — he was the next chief minister.

Bugti did not last long, though. Unhappy with the federal government’s implementation of policies in Balochistan, he resigned in 1974. General Rahimuddin Khan was appointed governor in 1978. The Baloch sardars were getting restive but Bugti remained silent.

In 1988, he joined the Balochistan National Alliance and was elected chief minister a year later. In 1990, Bugti resigned when the provincial assembly was dissolved by governor Muhammad Musa Khan under instructions from President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

It was not so much Bugti’s principles but his authority and influence over his people that worried the government. In power or not, Bugti was believed to be running a parallel government with the potential to disturb the dispensation.