Missing journalist reaches home in Hangu

HANGU: The ‘missing’ journalist Khan Zaman Orakzai reached his home here in the small hours of Sunday.

Talking to his colleagues at Hangu Press Club, he said unidentified persons seized him at the Said Habib Market on Samana Road in Hangu on Friday.“They blindfolded and threw me into a car and drove somewhere. After sometime they shifted me to a building and locked me in a room,” he said.

He said he was repeatedly asked the name of the organisation he worked for and accused him of reporting against them.“I kept denying the charges against me and pleaded them to set me free. Around Sunday midnight they blindfolded me again and bundled me into a car. I was terrified and could not guess what was going to happen to me. I was thrown out of the car near Kohat,” Khan Zaman Orakzai recalled.

He added after getting released he headed towards Cantonment Police Station Kohat where Station House Officer Abid Khan took him to a local TV channel’s office and afterwards drove him to his home in Hangu. He said he had no enmity with anybody.

Khan Zaman Orakzai asked the government to take steps to apprehend those who kidnapped him and provide security to the journalists.Earlier on Saturday, the office-bearers of Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ) and Hangu Press Club registered the case about their missing colleague at the City Police Station in Hangu.

The members of TUJ, and Orakzai and Hangu press clubs had warned that they would launch a country-wide protest campaign if the journalist was not recovered.Certain sources had also said the journalist had been picked up by officials of a security organisation to undergo investigation in a case.