Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Dr. Farzana Bari, a human rights activist, has accused the leaders of Awami National Party (ANP) and the provincial police of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) of protecting the people involved in Kohistan killings case.

A hearing was held on the Kohistan killings case by the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights at the Parliament House on Monday. The committee’s meeting was chaired by Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldini.

The Kohistan killings case emerged in 2011 when five women and a man were killed in the name of the honour after a video of the young man dancing before a group of teenage girls came online. Five girls in the audience, as well as the man who was dancing and his two brothers, were allegedly murdered on the order of a jirga.

The case regained light when, a month earlier, Mohammad Afzal Kohistani, the brother of one of the boys, who was pursuing the case in the Supreme Court was also murdered.

Dr Bari shed light on some missing links in the whole story of the Kohistan killings case and alleged that the members of the provincial bureaucracy and politicians are trying to protect the people behind the killings.

“It is not only the KP police, but also leaders of the Awami National Party (ANP) who have been instrumental in protecting the killers,” said Dr. Bari.

She alleged that the ANP provincial government in 2012 manipulated the facts in front of CJP Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry when he took a sou moto notice of the incident. The police, being complicit in the crime,   informed the Supreme Court that the girls seen in the video had not been murdered and that they were alive.

She further speculated that she may also be harmed for pursuing the case and if anything happens to her, KP police should be held responsible.

Justice Chaudhry had directed the then interior minister, Rehman Malik, to send a mission to Kohistan for holding a meeting with the girls. “I was member of that mission,” Dr Bari said, adding that other members of the mission were Bushra Gohar, an ANP member of the National Assembly at that time; Mian Iftikhar, the then KP minister; and Munira Abbasi, a sessions judge from Swabi.

Dr Bari said that when the mission visited the area two girls were brought before it and the provincial officials claimed that these were the girls seen in the video. “I objected that these were not the ones seen in the video, but both Bushra Gohar and the sessions judge stated that these were the same girls,” she added.

Later, the then CJP had closed the case with the condition that it could be reopened anytime.

“I sent the pictures of the girls to a digital lab in the United Kingdom and its result was that they have only 14 and 40 per cent face resemblance from two girls seen in the video,” Dr Bari said.

The case was reopened after the brothers of Afzal Kohistani were killed,” she said, adding: “Afzal repeatedly asked for police protection before his murder last month.”

When the senators asked about the link between the five girls and Afzal, they were informed that one of his brothers was also seen in the video.

Dr Bari also raised questions over the investigation into the murder of Afzal Kohistani and accused KP police of being involved in the murder.