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ISLAMABAD The National Assembly's Standing Committee on Sports national hockey superstar Rehan Butt and two team officials for un-Islamic behaviour after pictures circulated of them hugging a woman and apparently drinking alcohol in Argentina last month.
Rehan Butt was fined 100,000 rupees while coach Shahid Ali Khan and manager Asif Bajwa were fined 50,000 rupees each, the chairman of the National Assembly's standing committee on sports said.
“Islamic culture does not allow us to hug a lady and have alcohol,” committee chairman Jamshed Ahmed Dasti told Reuters.
Pictures run by local television channels and posted on the Internet showed one of the men hugging a woman and another apparently drinking a beer.
Another picture showed a group of men sitting at a table with glasses in front of them, apparently containing alcohol.
Bajwa told a local television channel that the woman in the photograph was a tournament liaison officer.
“All officials and players considered her as our sister,” Bajwa said before the fines were imposed.
The pictures were taken at the end of the tournament, after Pakistan lost in the final to New Zealand, and the woman had put the pictures on her Facebook page, he said.
Field hockey is Pakistan's national sport although the team's fortunes have waned since it won Olympic gold in 1984.
Dasti said the team's failure at the tournament made the “disgusting” activities that much worse.
