Hayat Sherpao

He was assassinated on February 8, 1975, in a bomb explosion on the campus of University of Peshawar Abdul Wali Khan, the leader of National Awami Party (Wali) was named as the primary accused by the Bhutto government. His death led the government to target the National Awami Party of Khan Abdul Wali Khan. This political party was banned and some of the party leaders were arrested on the charge of his murder, a charge they were eventually acquitted off.

Sherpao was a close ally of the former president and prime minister of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and a co-founder of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). On December 25, 1971 Sherpao became the 15th Governor of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa shortly after Bhutto had become president of Pakistan. At the age of 34, Sherpao was the youngest person to have held the office of a governor of a province in the history of Pakistan. He continued to hold this office till April 30, 1972. Sherpao also remained a federal minister in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's cabinet and a senior minister in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa cabinet.

Co-founding the Pakistan People's Party with Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1967, Sherpao took the responsibility to govern the Khyber Province at a difficult time when the country had lost East-Pakistan as a result of the 1971 war with rival India. As governor, he oversaw the re-constitution of provisional assembly, stabilising the law and order situation in tribal belt, and overseeing the success of covert operations in Afghanistan in 1975. His governorship and Sherpao himself tackled and faced intense opposition led by Abdul Wali Khan, and was assassinated in a targeted bomb explosion on the campus of Peshawar University in 1975.

Hayat Mohammad Khan Sherpao (Urdu: حيات محمد خان شيرپاؤ; 1 February 1937 – February 8, 1975), simply known as Hayat Sherpao, was a left-wing intellectual and socialist, serving as the 15th Governor of North West Frontier Province (now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province) of Pakistan, as well as vice-chairman of Pakistan People's Party. Sherpao held important executive offices, including served as the Interior minister and had held a number of provincial ministries of the North West Frontier Province. He was assassinated in 1975, and his death was blamed on a rival political party in the province - the Awami National Party of Khan Abdul Wali Khan.

Hayat Sherpao was born in 1937 to Khan Bahadar Ghulam Haider Khan Sherpao who was an activist of the Pakistan Movement. A Muhammadzai by tribe, he was born in the influential Sherpao family of the North West Frontier Province. He was the fifth son of Khan Bahadar Ghulam Haider Khan Sherpao, a Pakhtun aristocrat who played a role in the Pakistan movement. Hayat Khan was also the older brother of veteran Pakistani politician Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao.