BANNU, Sept 7: Suspected militants have beheaded two women they accused of indulging in immoral activities. The bodies of the women, who had been kidnapped a day earlier by armed people, were found in the Baran Dam area in the troubled Frontier Region of Bannu on Friday.

Witnesses said a note in Pashto was found near the bodies, warning that “women involved in immoral activities will meet the same fate”.

A local police official told Dawn it had not been confirmed that the women, Ms Mena, 45, and Ms Malki, 40, were involved in any immoral activity.

Ms Basri, a relative of the women, has lodged an FIR with the Bannu Cantonment police.

Nobody has accepted responsibility for the murders, but local people said the way the women were murdered indicated that it was the work of local militants who wielded influence in the area.

“It appears that the women were killed by militants because they had no enmity with anyone,” said the police official.

The women had been kidnapped by armed people on Thursday from the Circular Road when they were boarding a rickshaw.

The bodies have been sent for post-mortem.

Some people in the area said the women were innocent and they had not seen or heard anything wrong about them. However, some others claimed that the women had a reputation of being involved in some dubious activities.

Militants have launched ‘anti-vice campaigns’ in different tribal areas and settled districts of the NWFP and have been attacking video and CD shops, Internet cafes, hair-dressing salons, drug dens and girls’ schools.

Scores of people have been kidnapped and beheaded on the charge of spying for the government and the US.

However, this is for the first time that women have been beheaded. The militants have issued a warning to women against indulging in “acts of obscenity”.