Due to the failure of a jigra of clerics in convincing the residents of Jani Khel to bury four recently shot teenagers, the protestors have on Sunday elected to begin a march towards the federal capital.
The protesters – comprising local tribesmen and relatives of four teenage boys – of Jani Khel had been staging a week-long sit-in outside after the boys’ bullet-riddled bodies were found in a field on Sunday, for the last six days. The boys had gone missing three weeks ago.
They demanded the immediate arrest of the culprits involved in the kidnapping and murder of the four teenagers. They have been protesting with the coffins of the deceased boys, refusing to bury them until the culprits and punished.
“What do we want? Peace!”, “We want justice!” and “negligent state! were among the slogans chanted by the 10,000-strong group of protestors who originated from the Janikhel area of Bannu bordering South Waziristan and started a long march to Islamabad along with the bodies of the slain boys, demanding action against anti-state elements.
“We are staging a sit-in outside the Jani Khel Police Station for the past seven days. We will not bury these bodies until their killers are found and punished. They were just young boys who had a verbal fight with some local militants and afterwards they were kidnapped and killed before being buried in a local graveyard,” said a local while talking to a news outlet.
“Disappointed with the provincial government, the elders of Janikhel decided to march to Islamabad and agreed to not bury the bodies till the arrest of the killers,” another person told the news.
According to the reports, the protest had begun peacefully, but then the police blocked the road and attempted to use tear gas to disperse the crowd. After keeping the road blocked for several hours, police allowed the march to continue, according to Lateef Wazir, one of the protestors.
On the other hand, police in Karak district took Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) leader and tribal MNA Mohsin Dawar into custody to prevent him from travelling to Bannu to join and lead the march. PTM chief Manzoor Pashteen was also taken into custody in Kohat, it emerged.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Social Welfare Minister Hisham Inamullah Khan and a few elders of the Marwat tribe also went to Bannu to hold talks with the protesters. He informed the protest leaders that the tribes of Marwat and Bannu had brotherly ties and the former shared the grief of the local residents over the killing of the innocents.
The minister urged the protesters to bury the bodies, saying he would convey their “legitimate demands” to the chief minister and Prime Minister Imran Khan.
There was no immediate result of the negotiations, with the protest leaders seeking time to consult the Janikhel tribe.
