MARDAN: Police have arrested five more suspects in the Mashal Khan lynching case with the total number of detained persons rising to 47.

On Friday, Mardan District Police Officer Dr Mian Saeed Khan said that the five hailed from various districts of Khyber Pakh­tunkhwa, adding that three of them were students while two were employees of Abdul Wali Khan Univer­sity (AWKU), Mardan.

He identified the students as Usman, Suleman and Abbas alias Shenu while Nawab Ali and Shabir were the university employees.

“We have identified 49 suspects in the lynching case through the video footage and other sources in which we have succeeded in arresting 47 suspects so far.”

The DPO said that two of the suspects were still at large and hiding in tribal areas, adding that efforts were being made to capture them at the earliest opportunity.

Earlier in the day, two of the suspects — Bilal Bakhsh, a security in-charge at the university, and Amir, a journalism student at AWKU — were presented before a judicial magistrate on completion of their four-day remand.

While Amir confessed to hitting the body of the deceased with a stick, the security in-charge denied all charges levelled against him.

Police officials also presented six of the suspects, including the deceased’s classmate Imran who had allegedly pulled the trigger, before an anti-terrorism court. The judge sent them in four days of police custody.

At a press conference last week, the Deputy Inspec-tor General of Police (Mardan), Muhammad Alam Shinwari, had announced that Imran had shot Mashal Khan.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2017