CHAKWAL: A union council chairman, his nephew and a friend were killed, allegedly by his cousin and an accomplice over a personal enmity in Dandot, a village in the Chakwal district, on the Choa Saidan Shah-Pind Dadan Khan Road on Saturday.

Local PML-N leader Raja Majid Yousuf, 46, his nephew Raja Zishan Nawaz, 30, and former general councillor Tariq Mehmood, 60, were visiting the village to condole over the death of the wife of a retired schoolteacher.

They were sitting in the condolence gathering when they were allegedly attacked by their rivals, killing them on the spot. A villager told Dawn the attackers also disgraced the bodies.

The suspects then fled the village in a car, which was found in Khewra, although they have yet to be located. A special team of police, led by DSP Ghiyas Ahmed, has been constituted to trace the suspects.

Yousuf was elected chairman of the Dandot union council in the last local government elections.

Sources told Dawn an individual named Taiyub from the neighbouring Pidh village developed an animosity with an influential village tribe a few years ago. His home was stormed by the Maliks of Pidh, and in response Taiyub shot and killed one of the Maliks. He then fled the village with his brothers, and the Maliks set his house on fire.

Taiyub and his brother Adnan indulged in some other criminal activity as well, and were declared proclaimed offenders by the police. In 2012, they were killed by the police in an ‘encounter’.

A villager told Dawn that Yousuf supported the Maliks in this dispute, and one of the suspects was Taiyub and Adnan’s brother. Separately, a political rivalry also continued between Yousuf and the other suspect, who was his cousin. A few years Yousuf was shot at.

Acting district police officer Syed Kazam Abbas Naqvi told Dawn: “The incident occurred due to an old enmity. We will arrest the killers soon.”

Funeral prayers for the deceased will be offered in the village on Sunday.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2017