5 August 2002: Spanish Yeti Hunter, Jordi Magraner, Killed in Kalash

Khowari Report

A Spaniard Cryptozoologist & Yeti hunter, Federico Jordi Magraner, was found dead on Friday 2 August 2002 in a house he was renting in a village near the town of Bumburate in Chitral’s Kailash valley.

Police said he was 35 and living in Chitral for the past 15 years. His throat was slit with a sharp weapon. His 12-year old servant, Wazir Ali, was also found dead with his throat slit. Another domestic employee, Asif Ali, 20, an Afghan refugee had disappeared, they said. Police reported that a computer and a satellite phone were missing from his home.

Also Read: A Bibliography of Nuristan (Kafiristan) and the Kalash Kafirs of Chitral, Two Volumes, 1969

A three-day funeral ceremony began in the Kalash valley and the man, who was believed to have adapted the pagan religion of Kalash was buried in the community’s cemetry.

The Yeti (also known as snowman), possibly a version of Neanderthal man, are the monsters of the title. In north Pakistan they are known as barmanu. These bipeds never make an appearance and have no scientific recognition, yet locals have reported the presence in Himayalas and Hindukush.

Jordi Magraner, a Morocco-born Spaniard who grew up in France. A largely self-taught zoologist and naturalist, Magraner came to Chitral in 1987. He also worked on humanitarian convoys in Afghanistan before devoting his life to searching for the Yeti among the Kalash people in the Hindu Kush.

During the period 1988-1990, Jordi Magraner conducted a study on scientific lines with his colleagues Yannik and Erik L. Homme on behalf of Association Trogloydes, France. During 19 months of exploration in District Chitral he gathered 27 eyewitness accounts of different encounters with the Unknown Hominid of North Pakistan. He published a paper in the mid-90s which describes the findings of his 1988-1990 study in Pakistan. He records, “We have 27 stories in our possession. In all, 29 people have witnessed 31 contacts with wild hairy meni (?).”

Also Read: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY of Kafiristan & The Kalash Kafirs Of Chitral, Two Parts

One can only make a guess as to the actual motive behind his death. Rumour has it that he had formed an intelligence nexus with the slain Mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Masood during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. During the war he would often cross over to the Panjshir Valley lying on the other side of the Hindu Kush. Therefore, one version lays the blame of his murder squarely on Taliban, post-9/11.

Some believe he was a foreign secret agent and a few weeks before his death he had been asked by the government to leave. He had sophisticated communication devices in his possession. Another spoke of his irate temper and his frequent quarrelling with his domestic servants who were mostly Afghans. Yet another view gives a completely different angle. Given that he was single and was often seen in the company of young good-looking boys at his home, the local Muslims and Kalasha alike viewed the illicit relationship with suspicion and it is possible they found this behaviour in conflict with their own moral and social norms.

After 9/11, the area descended into chaos and it was then that Magraner ran out of his luck. Tempted to make one last attempt to get hold of the elusive Barmanou, he wandered deep inside Nuristan province of Afghanistan and was held hostage by an armed militant group for at least three months. Nobody reported this incident to the authorities simply because Jordi Magraner was on the other side of the international border and that too illegally.

Also Read: Dr. M. Kashif Ali’s Research Papers on Kalash

It is said that he grew a beard and pretended to have converted to Islam. The plan worked and he was released with honour — but not for long. He later embraced the religion of Kalash with whom he was living.

There were also suggestions he had had dealings with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the region’s legendary anti-Taliban resistance leader, whom he met in Afghanistan during his illegal visits to the country. A police investigation lasting two years remained inconclusive as they could neither unearth any clear motive for the murder nor apprehend any accused.

In May 2004, when Magraner’s siblings travelled to Chitral from Spain to retrieve his body, Kalash elders said exhumation would violate their beliefs. “The brothers and sisters of Jordi Magraner came from Spain three days ago to take his body for burial in Spain but the elders of Kalash people opposed it,” Chitral police chief Mohammad Saeed Khan told AFP by telephone.

Kalash elders told Magraner’s family that he had embraced their religion and stated in his will that he should be buried according to Kalash customs in Bombourete valley near Chitral, some 170 kilometres northeast of Peshawar.

“Magraner’s family members did not press for the exhumation of his body but asked for his belongings which were handed over to them by the locals.” Magraner’s belongings comprised his research work on the Ice Man, camera, compact disc, cassettes, laptop and papers, he said.

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Posted on 22 May 2025