SHABQADAR:
A man in Charsadda has gunned down his former fiancee and nine of her relatives Sunday, police said, six months after murdering his own parents and two brothers for refusing to pay his dowry.
The 25-year-old suspect, whom police named as Mir Ahmad Shah, was on the run after carrying out the pre-dawn attack with an AK-47 assault rifle in the Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“He stormed the house and killed all ten family members while they were asleep,” district police chief Shafiullah Khan told foreign sources, adding that two children and four women were among the dead.
Khan said Shah was a fugitive wanted for the murder of his parents and two elder brothers last year. His family had refused to accept a demand by the father of his then-fiancee for a residential plot as a dowry settlement.
Gulzar Khan, another police official, said that after murdering members of his own direct family, Shah became enraged at his prospective in-laws for making the demand.
Shah was also the second cousin of his former fiancee, said Abdul Rashid, another senior police officer.
“Shah had threatened his fiancee’s family after killing his own family members,” a police official said.
Security personnel said they were unsuccessful in arresting Shah and that he had probably escaped into the Malakand or Mohmand agency areas which border and are beyond K-P’s jurisdiction.
Syed is an associate engineer and had graduated from Tangi College of Technology.