A Pakistani man has been accused of murder after he allegedly shot and killed the administrator of a WhatsApp group. The shooting took place on Thursday night in the Regi locality along Peshawar, an area plagued by sectarian violence and with easy access to Afghanistan. The police have named the suspect as Ashfaq Khan.
The conflict started when Ashfaq was ejected from the WhatsApp group by Mushtaq Ahmed after an altercation. The two agreed to meet face to face to sort out the problem, but Ashfaq reportedly showed up with a gun and shot Mushtaq dead on the spot. The motive was “in reaction to removal from WhatsApp group,” as per the police report.
Mushtaq’s brother Humayun Khan had been to the spot but didn’t know anything about the feud between the two. “My murdered brother Mushtaq and Ashfaq had fallen apart on some issue in a WhatsApp group, prompting my brother to delete the latter. Ashfaq took offense and shot my brother to death,” he said. “It was a matter of no consequence or something very minor. Nobody in our family knew about the disagreement at all.”
Ashfaq escaped following the attack, and police are carrying out raids to arrest him. The case is a pointer to how easy availability of guns and poor law enforcement can turn petty differences into fatal encounters in the area.
