Two suspects admit to Soran’s murder

Court remands suspects in police custody for 10 more days

BUNER: Two suspects arrested for the murder of PTI’s Soran Singh have confessed in court to their involvement in the assassination of the Sikh lawmaker.

MPA Soran, who was the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chief minister’s adviser on minority affairs, was shot dead in a targeted attack near Pir Baba, Buner on April 22.

Two days later, the Malakand police arrested six suspects, including two elected councillors, for their involvement in the assassination allegedly over a political rivalry. One of the suspects, PTI’s Swat district councillor Baldev Kumar, is himself a minority leader of the party. After a ten-day physical remand, the six men were presented in a sessions court on Thursday.

Two of the suspects, Shangla Nazim Muhammad Alam and Behroz Khan, confessed to killing the minority lawmaker before Judge Asadullah. The others pleaded not guilty, Buner DPO Khalid Mehmood Hamdani told the media.

Alam told the judge that he arranged a contract killer named Syed Jan and gave Rs900,000 on behalf of Baldev on April 15.

The court has given the remand of the accused to police for 10 more days for further interrogation.

Soran joined the PTI in 2011 after ending his association with Jamaat-e-Islami. He held one of the several seats reserved for religious minorities in the K-P provincial assembly.

At a press conference on April 25, Malakand DIG Azad Khan had announced the arrest of the six suspects.

He said Baldev was the prime suspect of orchestrating the murder of his own party lawmaker. Baldev wanted to contest the elections but the PTI did not award him a ticket, creating differences between the two. The dispute led the disgruntled councillor to hire paid assassins for the MPA’s murder, the DIG claimed.

Baldev and Soran were business partners as well.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 6^th, 2016.