Residents in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, on Wednesday accused the police chief of falsely claiming that security forces had nabbed a suspect in connection with the murders on Tuesday of three female employees of Enikaas TV and radio.

The three media workers were killed by unidentified gunmen in Jalalabad on Tuesday in two separate but nearly simultaneous attacks and were buried on Wednesday, relatives confirmed. 

The three young women's names were: Mursal Waheedi, Saadia Sadat and Shahnaz Raufi.

The attacks took place in Jalalabad city’s PD1 and PD4, according to officials. After the shooting, police officials said that security forces had arrested one of the suspects.

However, according to residents in Nangarhar, the suspect had been arrested days before in a separate incident.

Residents accused the police chief of Nangarhar of spreading fake news.

“They showed us some pictures and said they had arrested the killer, but it is not true,” said Noorullah Sherzada, a journalist in Nangarhar.

“The government is not able to do the job as it should, so sometimes it crosses the line ethically and politically—it resorts to showing dated pictures to the people and leveling allegations against innocents,” said Ahmad Wali Massoud, the head of the Massoud Foundation.

 “This is an extremely ugly act and it shows incompetence—this action is not appropriate for  a police chief of Nangarhar—this displays the ethical character of a high level government official,” said Assadullah Nadim, a military analyst.  

Juma Gul Hemat was appointed as the commander of Nangarhar police a month ago. Previously he served as the police commander of Kabul and was accused of poor leadership by the public.