ISLAMABAD: The person who exposed the 2012 Kohistan video scandal was shot dead by unknown assailants on last night in Abbottabad
Afzal Kohistani was shot dead in the densely populated area of Sarban Chowk by unknown attackers. The attacker managed to flee after committing the crime.
Sources said that Afzal died on the spot after receiving multiple bullets. Afzal body was taken to DHQ Hospital for an autopsy.
According to Station House Officer Ghafoor, of the Cantt police station, Afzal was accompanied by his nephew at the time of the incident. The nephew shot back at the gunmen and remained unhurt.
The Kohistan video scandal first emerged in 2012 when eight boys and girls were killed by members of their tribe after they were filmed in a mobile phone video in a mix gathering where they boy danced and the girls clapped.
The video showed five females singing and clapping along as the male family members danced.  Follwing the emergence of the video, a local jirga ordered the killing of the boys and girls under ‘riwaj’ (a tribal custom).
Afzal, the brother of one of the boys in the video, was the one who made the news public, alleging that the girls had been killed on May 30, 2012, on the orders of a cleric who led a 40-50 member tribal jirga. Officials in the area, however, had claimed that the murders did not take place and the girls were alive.
Former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhary had taken a suo motu notice of the case on June 7, 2012, and constituted a fact-finding mission on July 17 the same year to investigate the case.
The commission went to Kohistan and investigated the matter, producing a report on July 20, 2017, which stated that the girls were alive. Rights activist Farzana Bari, also part of the commission, had expressed doubts at the time that the girls produced before the commission were not the same and some other burqa-clad and veiled girls were, in fact, presented.
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