Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The Awami National Party (ANP) has voiced reservation against the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) findings regarding the Mashal Khan lynching case and alleged that the report was prepared under political pressure.

Talking to Daily Times, ANP’s two senior officials Provincial Information Secretary Haroon Bilour and Senior Vice President Bushra Gohar alleged that Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had influenced the members of the JIT not to name their parties in their findings.

They said that Arif Khan, a member of the PTI youth wing, was leading the mob that tracked and then killed Mashal Khan in Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan (AWKUM) but he was named without mentioning his political association in the report.

The JIT had found that Mashal Khan’s murder was premeditated and that no evidence of blasphemy was found against him. The report said that ANP’s student wing Pakhtoon Student Federation (PSF) hatched the scheme to murder the victim after perceiving him as threat to their activities in the varsity.

The report also named Ajmal Mayar, the president of the university’s employees union, PSF president Sabir Mayar and another university employee Asad Katlang as those responsible.

Gohar said that her party demands an exemplary punishment for those that incited, organised and executed the attack regardless of attackers’ party association.

She said the report has ignored Jamaat and PTI’s names on purpose even though the prime accused belonged to these parties, adding that the JIT has also failed to point out who allowed rallies in support of Mashal’s killers.

“It seems the JIT members worked under political influence to target the PSF only to divert attention from the root cause”, she added.

Gohar said that Mashal’s killing has exposed PTI-led KP government and its failure to bring institutional reforms in the province.

“Had the police maintained law and order situation in Mardan, the mob wouldn’t be able to kill Mashal after falsely accusing him of blasphemy” Haroon Bilour said.

He said that ANP leadership would never attempt to support violence on the land of Pashtuns as the party itself remains victim of prevailing violence and terrorism in the past few decades.

Criticising the “fake reforms” in the province, ANP leaders said they consider Mashal’s killing purely a failure of the police who could not maintain law and order.

“PTI MPA Iftikhar Mashvani helped escape Arif Khan and yet got its name removed from the JIT’s findings indicate the political prejudice on part of the JIT”, they added.

When contacted for comment, Mashvani rejected the allegation and said that his party would never influence the JIT’s enquiry which was launched on direction of Supreme Court. He said it was evident that ANP’s leadership and workers who were involved in Mashal Khan’s killing.

Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar had taken the suo motu notice of the incident and Additional Advocate General Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Waqar Ahmad was given the task to complete the investigation in the case.

The JIT comprises officials from ISI, MI, FIA and the Special Branch and had been tasked with investigating Mashal’s murder.

The exchange of heated words and finger pointing over Mashal’s killing is shaping up politics of Mardan and Swabi ahead of 2018 elections.