ISLAMABAD police are worried that murders in the city are on the rise. Sixty-six people have been murdered so far this year, 55 of them in the rural areas of the capital territory where property and family disputes lead to violent crimes.

What worries the police more is a new trend - tribals involved in similar disputes running away from the northwest to Islamabad for safety and being hunted down by their enemies and killed.

It is difficult to track down such killers as they return to their lawless lands after committing the crime. “In the tribal culture, the instinct of revenge works, not law,” said a senior police officer.

Scores are settled personally, not through police. Families want to avenge their hurt themselves. They would not even approach police, much less help in investigating a crime. That often leads to a vicious cycle of revenge killings, according to the officer.

Tribal communities do hold jirgas to settle disputes and punish members found guilty of violating the tribal code and customs.

One can be fined or banished from the community for minor violations. But murderers usually flee rather than face a jirga.

They try to vanish in the urban populations. But the possibility of their pursuers hunting them down is never far away.

In recent years, some tribal fugitives have sought to hide in Islamabad, particularly in its rural areas of Koral, Sihala and Shahzad Town in the southeast and Tarnol and Golra in the southwest.

Police frequently comb these areas for militants and criminals and hauls up those who possess no, or doubtful identification.

But it is not much help to catch any fugitive. Majority of them happen to be poor migrant workers who arrive in Islamabad in search of earning a living.

Meanwhile, revenge murders go on in the localities with the police at a loss how to bring the killers to book.

Mohammad Bashir, a cook from Kohat, became the latest victim on July 1 when his body was found in a nullah in Sector G-11/2.

Police investigations revealed that he was residing in Merabadi in Golra with his cousin Ahsan Ullah, an imam in a local mosque.

Both had run away, with their loves, from their native town and married them. A jirga banished them. They had been living in Golra for two years. On the fateful day, Bashir went out of the house in answer to a call from his in-laws only to be found shot dead in the afternoon.

Earlier, on June 20, Raza Khan, a native of Swabi, was murdered when he came to visit his in-laws in Gulshanabad in Tarnol. It turned out that the killer was the son-in-law of his elder brother who had followed him from Swabi to settle a family feud. Police knew nothing more than that the killer had escaped on a motorcycle.

On May 23, four unidentified persons shot dead Mumtaz Alam, a native of Kohistan, outside his house in Sihala. The four called him out and killed him. Police believe Alam, who had been living in Sihala for 16 years, fell victim to old enmity.

Misal Khan, a cobbler from Bajaur Agency, was stabbed to death by two persons outside his house in Muslim Colony, adjacent to Bari Imam shrine, on April 12. Police suspected he was a hunted man.

Before that, on February 8, Rayaz Ahmed, a migrant from Mansehra and administrator of a seminary in Bhara Kahu suburbs, was killed, allegedly by his in-laws.

Police were told Ahmed was asked to come out of his house by relatives living in the same locality and was shot dead as he tried to flee them.

There was a time when criminals of urban areas used to flee to tribal areas for refuge. Now, the roles seem to have reversed.