Afzal Kohistani, man who publicised killings in Kohistan video scandal, murdered

Abbottabad: Afzal Kohistani, the man who had revealed that the five women appearing in a controversial Kohistan video were murdered, was killed today near Gami Addah area of Abbottabad, ARY News reported.

Two pedestrians also sustained injuries as unidentified men sprayed Afzal with bullets before waning in the dark. He died on the spot and his body was later shifted to Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital, Abbottabad.

It all started with a mobile phone video which showed five women clapping and singing as a man dances in a mud house, believed to be in the Palas valley, an extremely remote and conservative area in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Afzal, in 2012, had claimed on record that the five girls belonging to Palas valley in Kohistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, were murdered after a jirga (tribal court) had decided that the girls in question had violated tribal norms.

Though it has yet not been established that these people were killed, circumstantial evidence suggests they were, because none of the girls has been produced in the Supreme Court of Pakistan despite issuance of several production orders by the apex court.

The SCP had taken a suo motu notice of the case and formed a commission to ascertain the facts. It later disposed off the case after the commission recorded the statements by visiting Kohistan, saying they had met and identified one of the girls, while they met another one but couldn’t identify her.

The two men appearing in the video, brothers to Afzal, along with another, his cousin, were murdered on January 3, 2013 after he had requested the Supreme Court to reopen the case.

It was learnt that Afzal had been receiving death threats for a long time, however, despite his applications to DIG Hazara division and IGP Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he wasn’t provided security.