ABBOTABAD: A district and sessions court sentenced one suspect to death and four more to life imprisonment for killing the brothers of boys present in the controversial dance video made in Kohistan district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Those convicted in the case are Mukhtasar Khan, Awal Khan, Shamsuddin Taus , Maulana Yadwal and Jantar Khan are said to be relatives of girls present in the dance and celebration video.
The convicted murderers are involved in the murder of brothers of boys in the video who escaped after a jirga (tribal council) condemned them to death along with the girls for terming it an ‘unacceptable’ act according to tribal traditions.
In May 2012, Afzal Kohistani, a native of Kohistan district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, approached local media agencies with the information that a local jirga of his area had condemned to death five girls and two boys of for clapping and singing at a local wedding held in March 2012. Such mingling with the opposite gender was said to go against the tribal customs of the area, thus the punishment.
The boys escaped, so their brothers were killed by relatives of the condemned girls.
Kohistani himself and Human Rights activist Farzana Bari also  claimed that the four girls seen in the video, along with a teenage girl who was also present at the scene, were killed on May 30 in accordance with the Jirga decision.
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