PESHAWAR: A mob set fire to a police station and stoned a murder suspect to death in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province on Friday, a top police officer said.

The Nawagai police received a complaint on Wednesday that a man named Abdul Ghafoor had gone missing in Bara Kamangara village in Bajaur tribal district, with relatives accusing Abdul Rasheed of kidnapping him.

District Police Officer (DPO) Abdul Samad Khan told Arab News a police team was constituted that found body of the missing person in a remote area the same day. The police managed to arrest the murder suspect on Thursday.

“On Friday, around 1,200 people forced their way into the police station and set fire to it,” Khan said. “The law enforcers present inside fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd, but the mob broke the lockup’s door, dragged the suspect out and stoned him to death.”

Malik Farmanullah, a local tribal elder, said the killing has sent shock waves across the district and put a question mark on the role of police. He called the incident purely an “outcome of personal grudge” between the two families.

“The infuriated mob believed it would never get justice if the matter reached the courts,” Farmanullah said.

Arab News made repeated attempts, but could not reach the family of the deceased for comments.

Irfanullah Khan, an MPhil scholar and an expert on tribal affairs, linked the incident to the absence of a multipronged government strategy and procedural delays in the merger of Bajaur, one of seven districts of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), with KP province.

“Police and judicial systems are not fully functional in the erstwhile FATA, despite the fact that the restive areas were merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018,” he said. 

“The process of FATA-KP merger goes at a snail’s pace, which is a constant source of trouble for locals.”

The government merged the tribal districts with KP to bring relief to the restive region, which borders Afghanistan and has long endured the presence of militant groups and military operations against them.

But despite political and legal mainstreaming of the region of over 5 million residents, development is slow, with many not having access to most basic services, including health and education.

Soon after the incident, according to DPO Khan, additional police contingents were called in to bring the tense situation under control and arrest the perpetrators.

“We have detained 28 suspects who had a lead role in storming the police station,” he said. “The incident occurred at a time when most of the policemen were out on duty.”

The DPO said police officials were holding talks with local elders to ensure calm in the area and thwart any untoward incident. The police were investigating the matter from different angles and it would be too early to conclude anything, he added.