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       KOHAT: Former senator Shamim Afridi on Monday claimed that his son and former state minister Abbas Khan Afridi was killed in a bomb explosion and not a gas leak blast.

       He demanded the formation of a committee headed by a Peshawar High Court judge to probe his son’s death.

       Meanwhile, another victim of the “gas explosion” at Abbas Afridi’s Azeem Bagh hujra succumbed to his injuries at the Kharian Burns Centre on Monday, taking the death toll to five.

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       District secretary general of the PPP Javed Iqbal Afridi had suffered severe burns in the incident.

       During a news conference here, Mr Afridi wondered how all concrete walls could collapse in a gas blast.

       “No sane person would believe that the incident was caused by a gas leak,” he said.

       The former lawmaker said that he had left that hujra just 15 minutes before the blast occurred and there was no smell of gas at that time.

       He complained that despite the high-profile death, he and the hijra were visited by the SHO of the Bilitang police station and not any senior police officer.

       Mr Afridi said that the incident was part of a series of attacks at his CNG station and several strikes at his house with rockets and hand grenades.

       He lamented that he had lodged FIRs of all those attacks but the police didn’t make any arrests.

       The former senator denied that the incident occurred near the Azeem Bagh hujra.

       About the arrest of his son, Amjid Afridi, a three-time MPA and two-time minister over the Malik Asad murder case, Mr Afridi said that “touts had been hired” to give statements against him.

       He insisted that the family of Malik Asad, who was killed in an ambush on his car, had requested him not to address the news conference saying talks were in progress on the issue of the arrest and implication of his son, Amjid Afridi, in the case.

       “Malik Asad belonged to a respectable family, and we had good relations,” he said.

       The former senator said their “political and social track record” showed that they couldn’t even think about committing a minor crime.

       Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2025