MINGORA, Jan 5: Two activists of the Tehrik Nefaz Shariat- i-Mohammadi (TNSM), Malakand division, were released from a prison in the Kunar province of Afghanistan after payment of Rs300,000 ransom to the captors.

The two men, Rahmat Jalil, son of Shamsul Jalil, and Sardar Alam, son of Maulvi Khan, reached their homes in the Malakand division on Saturday.

They refused to talk to the press for the time being, but they were quoted by their relatives as saying that they had faced hardships during their imprisonment and could not reveal their ordeal.

They were handed over to their relatives in the Bangash hotel in Peshawar after the ransom was paid to their Afghan captors, the sources said.

It was revealed that hundreds of such people from the Malakand division had been imprisoned by Afghan warlords, who demanded a ransom of more than Rs100,000 for each of them.

Dozens of Pakistani volunteers who crossed over to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban are believed to have been killed and buried in mass graves by the Northern Alliance forces. Their names are yet to be known.