NWFP Assembly loses fourth lawmaker

Thursday, December 03, 2009By By Khalid Kheshgi

PESHAWAR: With the killing of the Awami National Party’s MPA from Swat Shamsher Ali, the NWFP Assembly has lost its fourth lawmaker since September 2008. All of them belonged to the ruling alliance and met unnatural deaths.

Fifty-nine-years-old Shamsher Ali advocate was killed in a suicide attack on Tuesday outside his residence at Dheray in Swat’s volatile Kabal tehsil. Amongst the critically injured were his two brothers.

Elected to the NWFP Assembly from PF-83 (Swat) on the ANP ticket in the February 2008 general elections, Shamsher Ali was a lawyer by profession and had a long association with the nationalist party. His brother Shaukat, who sustained serious injures in the suicide attack, was kidnapped by the militants soon after the security forces launched operation Rah-e-Rast in Swat in May this year and was subsequently freed.

Amongst the lawmakers in the NWFP Assembly, Alamzeb was the first victim of terrorism when he was killed in a bomb blast during inspection of development work in his PF-1 (Peshawar) constituency on February 11, 2009. Later, his brother Aurangzeb Khan was elected to the provincial assembly on the ANP ticket in the bye-election.

PPP MPA Iftikhar Khan Shagai from Mardan died in a road accident while on his way to attend death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto in Naudero on December 26 last year.

NWFP Minister for Excise and Taxation Liaqat Ali Shabab and PPP MPA Malik Tehmash had suffered serious injuries in the accident as they were also travelling in the same vehicle. The incident occurred in Rajanpur district in Punjab. His elder brother Imtiaz Khan Shagai was elected to the provincial assembly from PF-30 (Mardan) in the by-poll.

ANP MPA Akhtar Nawaz Khan from Haripur was assassinated over an enmity near his house in Khalabat town in Haripur district on September 10, 2008 when he was returning home after attending a funeral during Ramazan. Besides others, a local tehsil nazim was nominated in the First Information Report. Gohar Nawaz, brother of the slain lawmaker, was elected to the Frontier Assembly from PF-51 (Haripur) as independent candidate and then joined the ANP.

Elder brother of ANP MPA Waqar Ahmad Khan and his two nephews were killed by militants in Shah Dheray in Swat while younger brother of Minister for Forest and Environment Wajid Ali Khan serving in the Frontier Police as inspector was assassinated in Mingora.

NWFP ministers Bashir Ahmad Bilour and Syed Aqil Shah survived bomb blasts in Peshawar while Minister for Prisons Mian Nisar Gul Kakakhel got bullet injuries when militants attempted to kidnap him in Darra Adamkhel.