KOHAT: The Kohat police on Tuesday arrested the ringleader of an inter-provincial gang of women traffickers.

SHO Gumbat Ayaz Hussain told mediapersons that Shaheen Bibi was arrested during a raid. He said the gang first contracted marriages with girls and then sold them in different parts of the country for prostitution.

He said a Kohat court had declared the arrested woman a proclaimed offender for kidnapping and selling a girl. The SHO said another member of the gang, Akhtar Ali, had already been arrested.

PROBE: Chairman of the district development advisory committee MPA Ziaullah Bangash has constituted a committee to probe the alleged appointment of non-locals in the education department following uproar from the civil society organisations.

The activists had accused the education department of inducting people from outside Kohat as primary schoolteachers in Bazidkhel and Bahadar Kot schools.

Mr Bangash has directed the district education officers, male and female, and the additional deputy commissioner to verify the disputed domiciles of the recruited teachers and cancel their appointments if proven guilty.

LAND DISPUTE: The elders of Shiekhan tribe of Kohat have appealed to the chief minister to constitute an impartial committee to resolve a land dispute between them and the Sheraki tribe of Darra Adamkhel tribal subdivision.

They also warned of strong response to the Sheraki tribe if it launched any attack on them in future.

Addressing a press conference at the Kohat Press Club the other day, Abid Khan along with other tribesmen claimed the Sheraki tribesmen had kidnapped their people working in fields, and destroyed their vehicles by fire from a mountaintop several times.

They warned that the Darra tribe members would be barred from doing their businesses in Kohat if they did not mend their ways.

Meanwhile, addressing a presser on Tuesday, the elders of Sheraki tribe accused the Shiekhan tribe of illegally occupying their land up to the old tunnel plaza on the Indus highway.

Ameer Khan Afridi along with others claimed they were part of Kohat after the merger of Darra subdivision into it. They alleged the Shiekhan tribe had bribed police and revenue officials to transfer their (Sheraki tribesmen’s land) in their name.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2022