'A night with new wife may have cost Mehsud his life'

Thirty-five-year-old Mehsud had taken the risk of spending the night with his second wife around 1 am on Wednesday last, The Sunday Times reported. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan commander had four daughters from his first wife, but, in the tribal lands of Waziristan, it is only the birth of a boy that is greeted by rifle fire and jubilation, it said.

Last November, Mehsud took a second wife, the daughter of an influential local cleric, and was spending the night with her at her father’s house in the village of Zangarha when the missiles hit, the paper said.

The report said that in the end it might have been the desire for a son that led to the Taliban leader’s demise.

A diabetic, Mehsud had been feeling poorly in the scorching summer heat of Waziristan and the local doctor was also called to give him a glucose drip, the report said. As he lay on a couch on the roof of his father-in- law’s house tended by his new wife, a drone’s cameras locked in on him and a command was given thousands of kilometres away in the Nevada desert, following which two Hellfire missiles tore into the mud-walled building, it said.