PESHAWAR: A local anti-terrorism court on Wednesday acquitted two men of the Badbher militant attack.

Nine people were killed in the last year`s attack on the house of a peace committee chief in Badbher area on the outskirts of the provincial capital.

Judge of the court Abdur Rauf Khan observed that the prosecution could not prove its case against the accused, Zubair Khan and Ali Haider, both residents of Sulemankhel village in Badbher area.

The court issued perpetual arrest warrants for around 15 of the absconding accused in the case, including brothers Shahid and Amjad stated to be commanders of a Bara-based banned outfit, Lashkar-i-Islam, and declared them proclaimed offenders.

It accepted the two accused`s applica-tions for acquittal under Section 265-K of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The section empowers the court to acquit a suspect at any stage of the trial if it considered that there is no probability of the conviction of the accused in the case.

The attack, which occurred on Feb 12, 2014, killed Mashokhel Qaumi Lashkar chief Pir Israr Shah, son Sadagat Shah, brothers Mohammad Haji and Saeed Wali and nephews Yasir Shah, Sabir Shah, Akhtar Ali and Sadam, along with a guest of the family.

Sartaj Khan and Arshad Khan, lawyers for the two accused, said the prosecution had so far failed to produce a single evidence against their clients.

They said the attack took place during the nighttime and tjat after the arrest of their clients, the police didn`t conduct their identification parade to know if they were among attackers.The lawyers said the prosecution alleged that their clients were members of a banned outfit, but it failed to prove it.

The complainant in the case was Mukhtar Khan, a relative of the deceased, who received injuries in an earlier attack and was hospitalised at the time of the Badbher attack.

He alleged that his relative, Zafar Khan, a police official, died in an encounter with militants few days before the attack.

The complainant claimed that during that encounter, a brother of militant commander Shahid was also killed and that he attacked the peace committee chief`s house to take revenge for it.

The police claimed that the militants first hurled hand grenades on the house and then took nine male members of the family out of the premises before shooting them dead.