LAKKI MARWAT: The police have arrested a man over murder of 11 members of a family, including women and children, in Takhtikhel area of the Lakki Marwat district.

On Jan 10, Shaheed Asmatullah Khan Khattak police station of Naurang town had found 11 bodies inside a house in the rural locality. The deceased were poisoned and tortured to death at least four days before their bodies were recovered.

The incident was widely condemned. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caretaker Chief Minister Justice retired Syed Arshad Hussain Shah had sought a report from the provincial police chief.

Lakki district police officer Tariq Habib told a presser at his office on Wednesday that the police had registered an FIR against a suspect, Sadar Khan for the murders on the complaint of Umar Gul, a relative of the victims.

He said the alleged killer belonged to North Waziristan district and the police were alerted on receiving information that the suspect was trying to flee to Punjab in a public transport vehicle. “The cops arrested him near Gandi Chowk on the Bannu-Mianwali Road without any resistance and shifted him to the police station,” he maintained.

DPO Habib disclosed that the suspect had chosen Friday for executing his plan to kill all the family members of Amaldar and his brother, Tabedar. “One of the reasons why the killer chose Friday to take revenge from the family on a women-related dispute was that on that day four children of the family studying in a seminary usually came home on leave,” he revealed, saying that luckily, the children were not permitted to leave the seminary on Friday thus they remained unharmed.

Mr Habib said the killer and his three other accomplices reached the house of the victims and gave them poisonous cooked rice to eat. “When all the family members got fainted, the killer and his three other accomplices murdered them with a sharp-edged tool,” he added.

The district police chief said the arrested suspect had a criminal background and efforts were underway to bring his accomplices into clutches of law.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2024