The Kohistan killings case refers to an incident that happened in the spring of 2012 in Palas Valley, Kohistan, an administrative district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The incident involved the murder of four girls and a boy in so-called honour killing after a video of their private celebration emerged on the internet. The video featured a boy dancing while four girls were also seen clapping in the clip, along with another boy recording the video on his mobile phone. All girls and the boy seen dancing were murdered after the video was made public.
Events
The video was originally shot at a mixed gathering of a wedding celebration in Sartai, a remote village in Kohistan. The video that was circulated among villagers before it was shared with the jirga, in one of the most conservative parts of the province was immediately taken as dishonourble and a violation of the norms of the tribal area. The incident made it to the mainstream media in 2012 when Muhammad Afzal Kohistani, the brother of one of the boys in the video, alleged that the women were all killed in May 2012 on orders of the jirga, consisting of 40-50 members led by clerics. However, in the wake of this news, officials from the area denied the killing of the women claiming that all people were alive. The case was disposed off when rights activists went to the village to meet the girls as ordered by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Afzal Kohistani, in response to this report, asserted that the women in fact have been killed and imposters were presented to the investigations team, disrupting the judicial process. Kohistani filed an application to reopen the case, as a result of which three of his brothers - including the two boys in the video - were shot dead in early January 2013. Four suspects were arrested for the triple murder. In 2014, National Commission on the Status of Women took notice of the killings of the girls and moved the case to a local court that ordered police to produce girls in front of the judge to verify that the girls were alive. However, the police failed to recover the girls and bring them in court, that probed a second notice being produced the same year. The defence lawyer argued that the girls wouldn't be brought in court because of the local restrictions making it a matter of honour and shame. After rejection of the argument from Justice Ejaz Afzal, some underage girls were produced in court to prove that the girls were alive but in 2016, rights activistFarzana Bari disputed the claim saying that the girls seen in the video have been killed, and the ones brought to court are different girls. "Photos of the girls taken during the commission session were given to a Reuters' journalist, Katharine Houreld, who got the matching done through a renowned independent British agency 'Digital Barriers'. It was found in the said report that the photos of the girls, who were made to appear before the commission, did not match the images of the girls appearing in the said video," Bari stated in her witness statement. Later in 2016, a report submitted to the Supreme Court expressed fear that the five girls might not be alive as the girls presented in front of the court did not match the description of the girls in the video. It mentioned, "The view taken and expressed... is the outcome of human observations, not free from error, maybe right or wrong, and can lead to an inference that either the girls are not alive or they have fled away and gone into missing being well aware of consequences of traditional approach of their elders in such case." The report also collected data on the girls from National Database and Registration Authority database to match the age of the girls at the time the video was recorded in comparison to the girls presented to the investigations committee. After eight years of the original event, in August 2018, the Kohistan police registered FIR under Section 364 of the Pakistan Penal Code for alleged honour killing of the five women and two men seen in the video. The investigation that began on order of the Supreme Court later found in December 2018 that two out of five victims were reportedly alive, as claimed by the four suspects arrested in November that year. Afzal Kohistani, negating the report, claimed that the suspects were lying. "They killed all five girls by severe torture and are not identifying graves as it will reveal their brutality," he said. However, in a turn of events, Afzal Kohistani was shot dead in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in January 2019. Kohistani was calling for justice against the alleged killing of the five women and two of his brothers seen in the video. According to witnesses, Afzal was shot multiple times and died on the spot, while three passersby were also injured. In March 2019, the KP police arrested the suspects involved in his murder.
