Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf councilor arrested by police investigating lynching of student Mashal Khan

PESHAWAR: A key suspect in the Mashal Khan lynching case has been arrested.
Khan, a journalism student at Abdul Wali Khan University in the north-western Pakistani district of Mardan, was accused of blasphemy and lynched by a mob that included members of political parties, university staff members and students. An investigation later found the blasphemy claims to be false.
Muhammad Arif, an elected councilor representing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), is allegedly one of the ringleaders behind the killing in April 2017.
District police officer Dr. Mian Saseed said that Arif was arrested on March 8 in the Chamtar area near Mardan Ring Road.
“He had gone to Turkey, and when we received intelligence-based information that he had arrived back in the district, our special operation team raided Chamtar area and arrested Arif,” he added.
Saseed said that two other suspects were still at large and raids were being carried out to track them down.
On February 7, the anti-terrorism court announced verdicts in the cases of 52 defendants in the case. One was sentenced to death, 25 were jailed for four years and 26 were acquitted.
The 25 sent to prison were released on bail by the Peshawar High Court on February 27. They had petitioned the court on the grounds that Pakistani law states that prisoners sentenced to less than five years can be set free on bail.
Mashal’s father, Iqbal Khan, praised Mardan police for their efforts in the case, but said the guilty must be properly punished.
“52 people were arrested and today another prime suspect has also been rounded up but there are influential people on the back of these accused,“he said. “We need to expose those influential people as well.”
Khan added that a petition had been filed calling for a review of the Abbottabad bench’s decision to release on bail the 25 people jailed.
“There is a provision of law under which those sentenced to less than five years in prison can be released on bail but this provision cannot be applied here because in this particular case, the accused were already sentenced by the anti-terrorism court,” he said.