4 women killed for dancing with men in Pak tribal area: Report

Islamabad: Four women, condemned to death by a tribal jirga or council for dancing and singing with men at a wedding in northern Pakistan have been killed, TV news channels reported on Sunday.

However, senior officials refuted the news reports and described them as baseless.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik ordered a judicial inquiry into the reported killing of the four women as punishment for dancing with men at a wedding in Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

There was confusion about the number of women reportedly killed.

Geo News channel reported that four women were killed while The Express Tribune reported on its website that five women were killed.

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The fifth woman was the sister of one the condemned women, the report said.

A jirga in Kohistan had condemned four women and two men to death after the emergence of a mobile phone video that purportedly showed them dancing together.

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Reports said the jirga had decided they should be killed for dishonouring their families.

Though a cleric was arrested in connection with the incident, he claimed he had not issued any fatwa to kill the six persons. The two men condemned by the jirga have reportedly fled the region.

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Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain described the news reports about the killing of the women as "totally wrong and baseless".

He said he had talked to the Kohistan district administration chief and the local DIG Hazara, who had described the reports as baseless.

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Hussain said he had asked the district administration chief to reinvestigate the incident and to send an investigation team to Kohistan.

Muhammad Afzal, the brother of one of the two condemned men, claimed the women were killed on May 30 on the orders of the tribal jirga.

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Afzal further claimed the women were tortured with boiling water before they were killed.