Ex-MPA, accomplices acquitted in rocket launcher case

HARIPUR: The Model Court, Haripur, has acquitted a former MPA and his accomplices in the rocket launcher attack case when the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence.

Khursheed Azhar Advocate, the counsel for the former lawmaker, said that through an FIR lodged with Khalabat Township Police Station on August 26, 2013, the Pakistan Muslim League-N’s local leader Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan accused Qaumi Watan Party’s former MPA Gohar Nawaz Khan and his five associates of attacking him with rocket launcher when he was on way back home in his car.

In the attack, a shopkeeper Babar and a passer-by Rustam were killed. However, the complainant survived the attack.

After remaining under trial for almost six years, the newly established model court presided over by judge Khalid Mehmood announced acquittal of former lawmaker and his accomplices nominated in the FIR for lack of sufficient evidence.

The families of former MPA Gohar Nawaz Khan and Zulfiqar Ahmed Khan, who happened to be close relatives, had been in a blood feud for the last over a decade and both sides have lost more than six people so far. Former transport minister Akhtar Nawaz Khan, former tehsil nazim Iftikhar Ahmed Khan and Sher Azam Khan, in-charge security staff of former PM Nawaz Sharif, Haji Muhammad Anwar Khan were prominent who fell prey to the feud between the two families of Khalabat Township.