Three men get life imprisonment, five acquitted in Kohistan video scandal case

ABBOTABAD: A sessions court on Thursday handed life imprisonment to three men for killing five Kohistan girls in the name of ‘honour’ after a video clip showing them singing and clapping while two boys dancing went viral in 2012, reported ARY News.

Judge Shafiullah Jan sentenced the three accused, namely Sahir, Umar Khan and Sabir, to life imprisonment on charges of killing the five women. He exonerated five others from charges by giving them the benefit of doubt.

The convicts had confessed to the felony before the court, according to a lawyer.

The judge ruled that the convicted men were found guilty of plotting the murders.

Back in 2012, a video clip went viral showing a number of women clapping and singing while two young men dancing at a wedding in a village in Kohistan.

Subsequently, the five women, including a minor girl, were allegedly killed on the orders of a jirga (tribal court).

As the tribesmen kept denying murdering any of the women, the case landed in the Supreme Court as the then chief justice took suo motu notice of it and ordered an inquiry by a commission to ascertain the facts.

Afzal Kohistani, who had claimed on record that the five girls belonging to Palas valley in Kohistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, were murdered after a jirga had decided that the girls in question had violated tribal norms, was also killed later in March this year.

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.