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The five Kohistani women suspected of having been murdered by their families, are alive, said Farzana Bari, a member of the team sent to Kohistan on the orders of the Supreme Court to ascertain the status of the women. The court had been hearing a suo motu notice on the issue since reports came up that clerics had allegedly issued orders for the killing of five women, including an 'accomplice' and two men after a mobile phone video emerged of the six singing and dancing at a wedding in a remote village in Kohistan, reports The Dawn. According to allegations levelled by Mohammad Afzal, a relative of convicted men, the four women seen in the video and another woman had been killed by their relatives. Bari is a member of the fact-finding delegation sent to the northwestern region in the case. However, Bari said it would not be possible to produce the women before the court on Thursday as per the instructions of the apex court. Bari said she had personally met two of the women who she said were well. She further said that their bodies bore no marks of physical torture, and that the team had also recorded a video of the women. However, Afzal reiterated that the women had been killed by slitting their throats.

'Convicted' Kohistani women alive and safe, says Pak rights activist