Murder not suicide; man arrested on charge of killing brother

CHITRAL: A man has been arrested by the Lower Chitral police on the charge of murdering his brother and trying to cover up the crime by declaring it as a suicide.

According to the police, a report about the suicide of a youth was registered at the Shoghore police station on October 23, 2023. The victim was identified as Qurban Khan, son of Musharraf Khan, a resident of Patagram, Karimabad.

On the direction of District Police Officer (DPO) Ikramullah Khan, the police registered the case under Section 174 for an inquiry to ascertain the actual cause of death.

The case was then handed over to a team headed by Station House Officer (SHO) Attaur Rehman under the supervision of Subdivisional Police Officer (SDPO) Lotkoh Tameez Uddin.

As part of the investigation, the police got a postmortem conducted on the dead body which showed that it was not a suicide but a murder case.

The police after further inquiry arrested the brother of the deceased, Sher Babur Khan, and also recovered the weapon used in the murder, a police spokesman said.

Suicide cases have been on the rise in Chitral, especially among young people. Social and human rights activists have often raised suspicions that in most of the cases the victims were killed by their near ones due to different reasons. 

The police can play a very important role in checking such incidents by property investigating the cases instead of hushing them up after being declared as suicide by their families.