PESHAWAR: A suspect has been remanded in police custody for the alleged killing of Abdul Lateef Afridi, a prominent lawyer and former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), on Monday.
The 80-year-old was sitting in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) bar room when Adnan Samiullah Afridi opened fire at him, according to police. He was rushed to Lady Reading Hospital but could not survive.
The suspect was arrested from the crime scene and moved to East Cantonment Police Station where a case was registered against him. An officer at the police station said Adnan had confessed to the crime and that he had killed the victim over a family feud.
Separately, Muhammad Ijaz Khan, the chief of Peshawar police, formed a fact-finding committee, with the senior superintendent of police (SSP) of investigations as its head, to determine how the attackers managed to sneak a weapon into the court’s premises.
The committee has been asked to submit its report within 24 hours.
The suspect was presented before Judicial Magistrate Badar Munir Tuesday, who accepted the police plea and remanded Adnan into custody for two days.
He has also confessed to a murder at the police station, maintaining the attack was motivated by a longstanding family feud.
The slain barrister was among seven people acquitted in December of the charge of killing anti-terrorism court (ATC) judge Aftab Afridi and his four family members in 2021, after the judge declared the prosecution had failed to prove its case against the lawyer and his son.
Judge Afridi, who was posted to Swat, had come under a gun attack near Ambar Interchange in the Swabi district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on April 4, 2021 when he was travelling in his vehicle with his family on the Peshawar-Islamabad Motorway.
The ambush had killed the judge, his wife and his pregnant daughter-in-law along with her three-year-old son and injured his guard and driver.
The court’s decision to acquit the suspects had sparked controversy, with many questioning why the prosecution failed to bring the real perpetrators of the audacious murder to justice.
