Suspected murderers of minor boys arrested

LANDI KOTAL: The Khyber tribal district police on Friday claimed to have arrested two men, suspected to have been involved in a dual murder case.

District Police Officer (DPO) Dr Muhammad Iqbal, in a news briefing, said that two minors had gone missing from their house three weeks ago. The two minors, Asif and Munsif, had gone to their local seminary but never returned.

Noting that both boys were brothers, their family started searching for them. And when they could not find them, they lodged an FIR of the two missing children.

After several days, their bodies were discovered from the drain of a mosque in the Tirah valley.

This enraged locals who set the houses of the suspects on fire. The police only managed to disperse the enraged crowd by firing in the air.

Dr Iqbal said that they had arrested two suspects and that they had allegedly confessed to murdering the boys in the seminary during questioning. He added that one of the accused was an uncle of the two boys.

The police officer appeared to rule out sexual abuse of the children, noting that the apparent motive for the murder was a property dispute between the families.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2020.