A man shaved his 45-year-old wife’s head and broke her arm in Phalia on Thursday afternoon.
According to police officials, Kailo area resident Zulfiqar Muhammad wed Suraiya Bibi 23 years ago. The couple has two sons and a daughter. Residents of the village told police officials that the couple had been quarrelling for the past year ever since Zulfiqar said he wanted to take a second wife. “Suraiya refused him several times and even announced that she and her children would leave him if he married again,” said a neighbour Mukhtar.
On Thursday morning, Zulfiqar tied up his wife to a pole and shaved her head. Then he beat her with a stick and smashed her arm with a brick. “He also tried to cut off her nose when we saw him. We held him back, while my sister called the hospital,” said Zulfiqar’s 18-year-old son Waqar Ahmed.
Suraiya was taken to the Phalia THQ hospital and doctors said that her arm had been broken. “Her husband had broken several of her ribs as well and she had been brutally beaten. He almost chopped of her nose but we have stitched the skin and she should recover,” said Dr Azam Mehmood.
Suraiya’s sons Waqar and Ammar Ahmed, 16, came to the hospital with her. Her daughter Shazia told reporters that their mother had nearly been killed. “My father kept threatening her and all of us. He said he would kill us all if she didn’t agree to the second marriage,” she said.
Suraiya’s children told police and hospital officials that their parents had begun quarrelling over the issue last year but things had gotten considerably worse.
Hospital officials told reporters that Suraiya had lost the use of her right arm. “She is being treated for severe injuries but should be able to recover,” Dr Mehmood said.
Zulfiqar told police officials that he regretted torturing his wife. “I should not have hurt her but she has a duty to agree to my demands. She refused me the right to marry a second time for months and this is my right,” he said.
“He threatened to chop off her nose and then kill her. He said he would make a public spectacle of her. We want him behind bars,” Waqar said.
Phalia police have registered a case against Zulfiqar Ahmed and have taken him into custody.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 24th, 2011.
COMMENTS (7)
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@Sane: how can 'publishing such stories create more such cases'??? any proof or logicc behind this claim?
@Colonial Cousin: Even if she were my relative I would not like it to be published and in such cases Govt. can offer but little assistance.....Govt. can stop causing physical pain but not by any law can stop people from abusing their spouses/relatives/subordinates by mental torture, and publishing such stories create more such cases but Govt never pays attention......media should publish stories about awareness of the ways changes can be brought in the Govt. and in society and how to bring those changes
I am sure the husband now feels like a "real man" after doing this despicable act.
@Sane, the news would have mattered to you if the victimized woman was your own relative. A country is made up of its people and nothing is more important for a country than the well being & safety of the common people. The government must provide all medical & financial aid, it can for the victim. The man in question should be imprisoned for life, if not hanged.
what a shame that ET has no other news item to publish, in a country of millions such incidents happen all the day.......better publish news benefitting all the nation
While I pity the wife, I wonder how stupid the woman is who wants to marry him.