ANP chief warns against support to arrested party workers

 Student’s lynching

NOWSHERA: Awami National Party (ANP) chief Asfandyar Wali Khan on Monday warned the party leaders and workers against providing any kind of assistance to the arrested party workers in the murder of a student ofAbdul Wali Khan University Mardan and demanded capital punishment for those involved in lynching of Mashal Khan.

"My own son should be hanged if his role was established in the lynching incident. If any ANP leader or worker tried to provide any assistance to the accused involved in the student's murder, he would be expelled from the party. There is no place for such people in the ANP," he added.

Speaking at a workers convention here, he said the nation lacked tolerance and the Mardan incident was its example where mobsters took the law into their own hands and lynched a university student. "The people take the law into hands in the name of religion and kill one another without waiting for an investigation into the allegations. Which kind of Islam is this?" he questioned.

The nationalist leader feared the practice would continue in the country if the accused involved in the murder of Mashal were not awarded appropriate punishment. He thanked Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Saqib Nisar for taking suo moto notice of the incident and demanded the accused involved in the incident to be hanged in public.

Asfandyar Wali Khan also lauded the ANP parliamentarians for staging a hunger strike in front of the National Assembly, saying the federal government had accepted the party's demand of unblocking the blocked computerised national identity cards of Pakhtuns.

He demanded immediate merger of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, special financial package and 35 seats in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly for the tribal belt. Asfandyar Wali criticised the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, saying the provincial treasury was empty while allegations of involvement of PTI leaders and lawmakers in corruption were emerging.

He said PTI chief Imran Khan was asking Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign over corruption allegations, adding that he should also take resignation from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser.

Asfandyar said that his ancestors had warned against the Afghan war and its implications. "Now Pakistan has launched operation Raddul Fasaad to get rid of it," he added. He said that peace in Afghanistan was a must for peace in Pakistan. ANP general secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain and others also spoke on the occasion.