Birir residents seek protection against hired assassins

CHITRAL, March 27: The residents of the Kalash valley of Birir have demanded of the government to provide them with security against those who are trying to oust them from their agricultural land in Khairabad which they had inherited from their forefathers. Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the Kalash elites, most of them women, namely Misro Shaheen, Pilpil bibi, BBC, Maat Gul, Shirmat Begum, Wazeer Azam, Noor Ahmed and others said a local influential named Mumtaz Ahmed was using hired assassins to force them out. They complained that the hired assassins from Damil, Arandu and even Afghanistan are being harboured by the local person to use against us to force to leave our lands to him. The Kalash residents said that although the local administration and police had taken some steps against the aggressor but they still find themselves quite unsafe as he has not ceased his subversive activities against the innocent Kalash people who did not know how to quarrel. They further complained that now those people are also being subjected to torture by the influential person who extended help to the Kalash people to protect against the naked aggression. Citing example, they said that the aggressor allegedly fired upon the motor car of his younger brother and got implicated their attorney in the court Fazle Haque and lawyer Hussain Ahmed in the false case of firing on his car. They have demanded of the caretaker chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and chief justice of Peshawar High Court to take cognizance of the excesses perpetrated against them by Mumtaz Ahmed and his hired assassins.–Zahiruddin]]>