Judge’s absence: Kohistan video case adjourned

The next hearing will be held on March 18.

KOHISTAN: Hearing of the Kohistan video scandal case was adjourned till March 18 on Wednesday as the district and sessions judge is on leave to perform Umrah. Mazhar Akram Awan, counsel for the National Commission on Status of Women, has filed a habeas corpus petition under Section 491 of the CrPc asking that the women seen celebrating in a video and later allegedly killed in May 2012 on the orders of a tribal jirga be produced before the court if they are alive. District and sessions judge Sardar Muhammad Irshad Khan on February 11 asked the DPO to produce the four girls seen in the video and one of the girls’ sister on February 26 or exhume their bodies if they have been killed.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 27^th, 2014.