Clue to journo’s murder found: DPO

HARIPUR: The police had almost found the clue to the real assassins of slain journalist Bakhshish Elahi and would soon produce them before the media, an official said on Tuesday.

Addressing a news conference at his office, DPO Shehzad Nadeem said some target killers allegedly hired by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s woman member of district council Hina Khan were involved in the assassination of Bakhshish.

Based on the confessional statement of accused Hina before the police under Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code, he said she was interrogated using modern gadgets and it proved that she decided to take extreme step of getting rid of Bakhshish Elahi.

The reasons behind the murder of Bakhsish, he said, was that the latter wanted her to join the lobby within PTI’s district councillors that was allegedly conspiring against District Nazim Adil Islam and wanted to throw him out through no confidence motion.

But she literally refused to cheat the district nazim, which ultimately was not acceptable to Bakhshish who was also allegedly playing into the hands of that very lobby and finally started blackmailing her. The DPO said that both Hina and Hanif were arrested on concrete evidence of having links with each other and the hired assassins, whose named he did not share with media.

He added that police were very close in apprehending the killers who were allegedly enjoying abetment of Hina. 

He said the district nazim and 55 other journalists and Bakhsish’s friends were interrogated in this case. He denied that Hanif Akhtar, another bureau chief of a local Urdu daily, was arrested on the basis of his professional work or any personal grudge but the real brother of slain journalist had nominated him with  Hina Khan on the suspicion of being involved in Bakshish’s murder.