ABBOTTABAD: After holding a series of meetings with police officials, the relatives of Afzal Kohistani ended a sit-in outside the cantonment police station here and took the body of the resident, who had ‘exposed’ the 2012 Kohistan video scandal, to the ancestral town for burial.

Mr Afzal was killed by gunmen in Abbottabad on Wednesday evening.

The police arrested the deceased’s nephew, Faizur Rehman, on the murder charge and seized a pistol.

The scandal surfaced in 2012 as a mobile phone video showing boys and girls clap and dance during a wedding function in a remote Kohistan village went viral on social media.

The boys, who were brothers of Afzal, were killed afterward.

Also, all five girls seen in the video were reportedly killed.

The family claimed that unidentified men had issued death threats to Mr Afzal, who had gone to Abbottabad to meet his lawyer.

It also objected to the nomination of the deceased’s nephew in FIR, saying Faizur Rehman accompanied Afzal as guard.

The family said in the past, Afzal’s two brothers were killed, while their house was torched.

Haripur SP (investigation) Shah Nazar Khan held talks with Bin Yasir, brother of Afzal, and their lawyer Abdul Wadood.

The family of the deceased demanded the immediate release of their member, holding of a judicial inquiry into the killing, and security for the deceased’s wife and five children.

The police recorded the statement of the suspect in front of his brother and lawyer and said they would produce him in a local court tomorrow.

Also in the day, postmortem was performed on Mr Afzal’s body at the DHQ Hospital, while three people, who suffered injuries in firing, were admitted to the Ayub Medical Complex.

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2019