CHITRAL: The Lower Chitral police arrested an Afghan trader and seized explosives from his shop in the Drosh Bazaar here on Friday.

District police officer Sonia Shamroze Khan told Dawn that the arms cache was recovered during a search and strike operation carried out jointly by the Counter-Terrorism Department and the intelligence agencies officials.

She said the explosives included 21,850 meter safety fuse and 1,911 packets of dynamite, adding the accused, Aftab Khan, attempted to flee, but he was overpowered and arrested.

The police officer said a case had been registered against him under section 7 of ATA and 4/5 Explosives Act with the CTD police station Swat. Later, his 10-day remand was obtained from the anti-terrorism court.

The district police chief said efforts were underway to bust the gang the Afghan national was a part of.

WORKSHOP CONCLUDES: A five-day workshop to work out alphabets and phonetics to bring the Kataveri (also called Shekhani) language into written form concluded here the other day.

Held under the aegis of Forum for Languages Initiative (FLI), eminent linguists of the country and exponents of the Kataveri language attended the workshop.

On the occasion, Ajaz Ahmed of FLI said the third largest language out of the 14 languages of Chitral was hitherto in vocal form and needed to be converted into written.

He said the language was spoken by people residing in the border villages of Shekhandeh, Arson, Badugal, Gobor and Arandu. He appreciated the efforts of Nasir Shekhani for the preservation of the Shekhani language which faced extinction with the advent of modern age.

Farid Ahmed Raza of FLI, and Naseem Haider, a local expert of the language, facilitated the workshop.

Published in Dawn, April 17th, 2021