MANSEHRA, Jan 5: The relatives of three brothers killed in connection with the Kohistan marriage video controversy received the bodies on Saturday after a local jirga assured them that justice would be done in the case.
The bodies had been lying at Puttan police station after the family of the slain brothers refused to receive them for burial.
They were taken to the district headquarters hospital in Battagram on the order of a local court on Friday night after the relatives appealed to it, seeking the bodies’ examination.
After the examination, the bodies were taken back to Puttan the same night.
Hazara Division Commissioner Khalid Khan Umerzai said police and the district administration had completed the legal formalities for handing over the bodies to the family.
He said police had been sent to Palas to arrest the murderers and information in this regard was awaited from the remote area where the personnel had gone on foot.
“The bodies of Shah Faisal, Rafiullah and Sherwali killed by relatives of women seen clapping in the video have been received by the relatives after local elders held a jirga and persuaded them to take them for burial,” a police official told this correspondent by phone.
The jirga which held talks with the relatives of the slain men included former MPA Maulana Dildar Ahmad, Malik Saeed and Aurangzeb.
Officials and locals said that Haleem, a cousin of the slain brothers, had received the bodies and taken them to the Sheikhabad locality of Kohistan for burial.
Earlier, Mohammad Afzal, a brother of the slain men, who had broken the news of murder of the women seen in the video clip last year, told reporters here that his family would not receive the bodies until justice was done.
Afzal said that Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry should reopen the case.
He said that killers intended to throw the bodies into a river but police reached the area and they could not do so.
A man of the area said ‘honour killing’ of men and women found indulging in immoral activities was a local tradition. He said the family or tribe of such a woman first kill her and then the man involved with her.