GHALANAI (Mohmand Agency), Jan 7: A grand ceremony was held here on Sunday to mark the end of a blood feud between two tribal groups, and a prominent tribal elder agreed to hand over his daughter in Swara.

The tribal elder, Malik Syed Mahmood Jan, paid a fine of Rs600,000 and announced that he would marry off his daughter to a member of the rival family, which happened to be of his cousins.

In the presence of a large number of people, he claimed that he was not sacrificing his daughter under the Swara custom and said the girl would be ‘properly married’ in accordance with local traditions.

"This is not Swara. Proper Nikah would be performed," he told newsmen who attended the ceremony, adding that the date of the marriage would be fixed some time later.

"This marriage would help cement ties between the two families besides averting further bloodshed," Malik Mahmood said. On Saturday, one of the brothers of the girl, Tehmina, had appealed to the government and the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice of the issue and said that his sister was against the marriage. He said that the jirga had removed the word Swara from the agreement because of the legal bar on giving away women to settle disputes.

Malik Mahmood, however, insisted that unlike cases of Swara in which girls are simply handed over to rival groups without performing Nikah, his daughter would be ‘properly married’.

The girl’s another brother, Irfan Mohmand, who attended the ceremony along with his father, said that his presence ‘proved’ that the girl was ‘willing’ to marry Tehseenullah, a member of the rival group. The claim could not be confirmed.Mahmood Jan, his son Iqrar and nephew Anwer Khan, had been charged with murdering his cousin, Amanullah, with whom they had a feud. They suspected that Amanullah had killed the son of Malik Mahmood over a feud involving a plot of land.