How Did it Happen?
Tahir Dawar was working as the Superintendent of Police (SP) of rural Peshawar in 2018, when he went missing from the federal capital on 26th October.
Dawar was in the capital attending a meeting and kept contact with him family hours before his disappearance. His brother, Ahmaduddin, told media sources that “At 6:30pm, Tahir talked to his wife in Peshawar and told her that he was in Islamabad and may return if the meeting is over soon otherwise he would be coming back on Saturday. However, at 7:15pm his wife received a text message that Tahir was in Sarai Alamgir near Jhelum.”
Nothing was known of his whereabouts until Nov 13, when a picture of a dead body was posted on social media and later the foreign office confirmed that the picture was indeed of Tahir Dawar. The locals in Nangarhar had found his body in the area. The abduction and killing was carried out by Wilayat-e-Khurasan terrorist group, an affiliate of the Khurasan chapter of Islamic State to “avenge the killing of its members by SP Dawar with the help of military”.
What Happened Next?
“[The] brutal murder of SP Tahir in Afghanistan is highly condemnable. We have lost a brave police officer,” the chief military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor wrote on his official Twitter handle. “His abduction, move to Afghanistan, murder and follow-up behaviour of Afghan authorities raise questions which indicate involvement or resources more than a terrorist organisation in Afghanistan,” he said.
The tweets came from the ISPR mere hour after the body was handed over to Pakistan. This indicates towards to souring of mutual relations between the two neighbouring countries.
Shaukat Yousafzai said that SP Dawar was abducted to Afghanistan where he was brutally tortured and killed, but the Afghanistan government’s attitude was deplorable. “Governments should not have such attitudes,” he added. “We went to Torkham to receive the body with full honour but Afghan officials’ attitude was not good.”
In response to the diplomatic protest registered by the Pakistani Foreign Office to the Kabul Authorities, Omar Zakhilwal, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, promised Kabul would investigate the matter to its fullest.