HARIPUR: The model criminal court has acquitted two brothers here on the charge of killing young journalist Sohail Khan.

According to the prosecution record, Sohail Khan, 28, was a resident of Hattar village and worked for a local Urdu newspaper.

He was ambushed by gunmen on the morning of Oct 16, 2018, as he was returning home in his high-roof van after dropping off students at a local school. He suffered multiple bullet injuries and died instantly.

The local journalists took to the streets against the murder and insisted that Sohail was killed over his journalistic work about the local industrialists and drug peddlers. The police, however, claimed that the journalist was murdered over a family feud.

The deceased’s family accused his cousins, including Ali Sher Iqbal and Humayun Sher Iqbal and their father, Sher Iqbal, all residents of the same village, of committing the murder.

The police arrested all accused. Sher Iqbal was freed after a court granted him bail in the case. However, his sons languished in the Haripur jail. The case was referred to the Model Criminal Court Haripur, whose judge Sajjad Ahmed Jan acquitted the accused citing the prosecution’s failure to prove the charge against them as the reason.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2021