Suspected killers of journalist acquitted

HARIPUR: The Model Criminal Court here on Wednesday acquitted a man and his two sons charged with the murder of local journalist Sohail Khan.

According to the first information report registered with the Hattar Police Station, Sohail Khan, 28, resident of Hattar village was, was on the way back home by his high-roof van after dropping school children when unidentified assailants ambushed him on the morning of October 16, 2018. Sohail Khan had been working for a local Urdu daily.

He suffered multiple bullet shots and died instantly. The local journalists took to the streets and staged protest against the murder of their colleague and termed it the result of Sohail’s journalistic work as he used to write about the local industrialists and drug peddlers,

However, the police had ruled out the impression that it was neither an act of terrorism nor backlash of Sohail’s journalistic work but claimed that the motive behind his assassination was a family feud.

His family later charged Sohail’s first cousins Ali Sher Iqbal, Humayun Sher Iqbal and their father Sher Iqbal of the same village, with the murder of Sohail Khan.

The police had arrested all the nominated accused. However, Sher Iqbal was released on bail after some time while his sons remained lodged in the Haripur Central Jail. The case was referred to the Model Criminal Court Haripur where judge Sajjad Ahmed Jan acquitted the accused when the prosecution side failed to prove the charges through evidence, said Advocate Maqbool Hussain, the counsel for the complainant party.