Former Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Latif Afridi was shot dead on Monday after a gunman opened fire on him at the Peshawar High Court (PHC).
According to police, the senior lawyer—who also served as a senior leader of the National Democratic Movement—was shot six times while he was sitting in the bar room with other lawyers. They said his attacker, an individual identified as Adnan, had been taken into custody at the scene of the crime. The entire area has been sealed off pending investigation. Police said initial investigations suggested personal enmity, but stressed that it was still too early to reach a definitive conclusion and Latif could have been targeted for other reasons.
A spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, where Afridi was rushed after the assault, confirmed that they had received the lawyer’s body, adding that he had been dead on arrival. They also confirmed that the deceased lawyer had been shot six times.
The 79-year-old Afridi spent several years as an active politician, serving as the provincial president of the Awami National Party from 1986 to 1989; a member of the National Assembly between 1997 and 1999; and the general secretary of the ANP between 2005 and 2007. In September 2021, he became a founding member of the Pashtun nationalist National Democratic Movement.
Apart from his role as president of the SCBA from 2020-201, he also served as president of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association and the vice-chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council. He played a key role in the lawyers’ movement that culminated in the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.