Islamabad, Aug. 17: An influential former Pakistan minister has gone into hiding two days after the supreme court ordered his arrest for handing over five minor girls to another tribe in a murder case in Jacobabad, southern Sindh.

Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, a sitting MP of Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and a former defence production minister, had decided as the head of a 14-member tribal council, or a jirga, to hand over the girls in June last year as compensation to settle a decade-old murder case.

The feud began in 1997 when tribal leader Miandad Banglani was killed in a shootout with another tribe led by Hafiz Qamaruddin over a dispute. The police registered a case after nine years spurred on by President Musharraf’s promise to curb the dirty tradition of “sang chatti” or handing over girls to the victims’ family as compensation.

Jacobabad police officials said today that three of the 14 jirga members are already in police custody and the court has ordered the arrest of the remaining 11, including Bijarani. The order was passed by a five-member court bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.