Islamabad: Police on Tuesday arrested the cleric accused of sentencing six people to death for singing and dancing at a wedding party in Kohistan district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa province.
“Police have arrested a cleric and his companion for issuing the death decree, but they totally denied it,” local administration official Aqal Badshah Khattak told AFP.
“The cleric has said he had no role in the decree and his name was misused,” Khattak said.
Earlier on Monday, the French news agency reported that Pakistani authorities in the area said local clerics had ordered the punishment over allegations that the men and women danced and sang together in Gada village, in defiance of strict tribal customs that separate men and women at weddings.
The Jirga issued a decree after a mobile phone video emerged of the six in a remote village.
“It was decided that the men will be killed first, but they ran away so the women are safe for the moment. I have sent a team to rescue them and am waiting to hear some news,” a police officer told the news agency, adding that the women had been confined to their homes.
“This is tribal enmity. The video has been engineered to defame the tribe, he added”
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