NOWSHERA: Renowned Pashto folk singer Zarsanga and her two sons were inju­red when they were attacked in their house here in the Azakhel Bala area by five men with whom they reportedly have a monetary dispute.

Officials of the Azakhel police station are yet to register the FIR of the incident which took place on Saturday afternoon. They said they were waiting for a medical report about the injured and would register the case in the light of the report.

However, police arrested alleged attackers — Khairul Bashar, Khalid Khan, Habib Khan, Zeeshan and Zubair Khan — and produced them before the court of a judicial magistrate under Section 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The court set the suspects free on the condition of furnishing two sureties of Rs50,000 each.

A police official told Dawn that both the parties had lodged complaints of attacks against each other. He said that members of the rival group had also suffered injuries in the incident.

He said that Khairul Bashar had alleged that when he and his associates went to receive money Zarsanga’s son owed to them, her sons had attacked and injured them.

After the incident, a photograph of the septuagenarian singer and her two sons, all three in injured condition and sharing a single hospital bed, went viral on social media, drawing public outrage. In the picture, Zarsanga has bandage on her face and her sons have bandages on their heads.

They were later discharged from the hospital.

Zarsanga and her sons told the media that they had a monetary dispute with the rivals who sneaked into their house and severely thrashed them. Shehzad, the elder son of Zarsanga, in his statement recorded at the Azakhel police station, said that he was at home with his mother and others family members when five armed men intruded into the house and thrashed them.

He said that his younger brother Mano had business relations with the rivals and had borrowed money from them. He had repaid the loan but the rivals were demanding massive interest on the amount, he added.

Zarsanga requested police to help them settle the dispute once for all. She admitted that they had borrowed Rs500,000 from the rivals.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2017