Six men acquitted of murder charges in Kohistan video case

MANSEHRA: The Abbottabad Circuit Bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Tuesday acquitted six men accused of murdering the three brothers who had allegedly made the video of five women in Kohistan in 2012.

PHC Abbottabad Circuit Bench’s Justice Ishtiaq Ibrar and Afsar Ali Shah pronounced the short verdict in the presence of counsels for both sides. District and Sessions Judge Kohistan had handed down death sentence to one Mukhtasar and life imprisonment and payment of diyat of Rs1.2 million to Mohammad Taus, Jintasser, Zafarul Haq, Shamsuddin and Saeedur Rehman for killing the three brothers, Sher Wali, Rafiuddin and Shah Faisal in 2014.

Afzal Kohistani had moved the PHC Abbottabad Circuit Bench seeking enhancement in punishment of the six men for killing his brothers. The accused had moved the court seeking acquittal.

The three brothers were killed in 2013 after a video in which their two siblings were seen dancing and the five women were seen clapping went viral in 2012. The women seen in the video were also allegedly killed by their families and a commission of the Supreme Court constituted on the petition of Afzal Kohistani was also probing  the murder of the women seen in the video.

Afzal Kohistani told reporters outside the court that his family was denied justice as the killers of his brothers were acquitted. He said he would challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court. “If the perpetrators were not punished, more innocent men and women would be killed for so-called honour in the future,” he stressed.