RSF Calls for Independent Investigation into Murder of Pakistani Reporter Zulfiqar Mandrani

The journalist, based in south-eastern Pakistan, was shot twice in the head. Given the first elements of the obviously flawed investigation by the local police, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) are calling on the provincial authorities to commission a team of independent investigators to shed light on this heinous crime.

The culprits try to pass the assassination of journalist Zulfiqar Mandrani as an honor killing . Writer for the Sindhi Kawish and Koshish language daily newspapers , the reporter was found on Tuesday 26 May, with two bullets lodged in the head and traces of torture all over his back, in a room located in the outskirts of Larkana a city of the province of Sindh, in south-eastern Pakistan.

The same day, the police of Dodapur, the locality where the murder took place, hastened to find a personal reason to explain the murder, highlighting the testimony of two suspects, Riaz Hussain Daiyo and Nazir Daiyo, who allegedly “confessed to having killed the journalist in the context of an honor killing” .

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Questioned by RSF, Ghulam Mustafa Jarwar , news director of the Kawish News Network , for which Zulfiqar Mandrani worked, confirmed that he could not believe for a moment that his journalist had been killed in the course of a crime of honor. “The police only tell us that the two arrested suspects have confessed. But there has been no investigation to try to find the real motive for this murder. ”

Parallel justice

In the Pakistani tradition, invoking an “honor crime” to qualify a murder allows, ultimately, to escape criminal justice, and to rely on the arbitration of the panchayat, a sort of council of wise men instituted in each village. Those guilty of murder thus prefer to rely on this type of parallel civil justice, through which they can get out by obtaining a pardon from the family – subject, if necessary, to financial compensation.

Zulfiqar Mandrani is the second journalist found dead in Sindh province since the beginning of the year. On February 16, we found in a canal the lifeless body of Aziz Memon , the face and the neck girded with wire. He also worked for the Kawish News Network group .

Down three places from 2019, Pakistan ranks 145th out of 180 countries in the 2020 edition of the World Press Freedom Index published by RSF.