Sibling rivalries: Three men butcher and bury sister in courtyard

Police unearths the woman’s body after a servant told them she was buried under the marble floor.

BAHAWALPUR:

Three men were arrested on charges of having murdered their sister on Tuesday.

According to police officials, Patafi Colony Sardar Garah residents Abdul Sattar, Shakeel Ahmed and Mohammad Saleem allegedly butchered their sister Shameem and then buried her body in their court yard. Police officials said that a servant who worked at the house tipped them off and they arrived at the scene to investigate on Tuesday morning.

“He told us that he had been forced to help them dig the grave and then cover the courtyard with marble,” investigation officer Hazoor Buksh said. “We broke apart the marble in their courtyard and found the corpse. The woman had been mutilated and the body had been decapitated,” he said.

A neighbour, Irfan, told police officials that the accused suspected Shamim of having relations with another resident of the village. “They had been arguing about the incident for days. We heard them accuse her for several days and they had loud fights but eventually it all stopped,” he said. “On Monday night I went to visit Shamim to see if she was okay but Saleem told me that she had gone to see her aunt in Gujranwala,” Batool Bibi told police.

“They accused her of having an affair and told her that they would kill her and the man she was seeing. Saleem said that he had seen them walking together in the village and that she had dishonoured the family,” a servant at the house told the police.

“They took pains to cover up the body. They buried her in their own courtyard but covered the entire surface with marble. We would never have thought to look here if we hadn’t been told about it,” Rukanpur investigation officer Hazoor Buksh told reporters that police had filed an FIR under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code and had sent the body for an autopsy.

“The girl was brutally tortured and killed with an axe. They decapitated the body and then buried her,” said a DHQ Hospital doctor.

“We are conducting DNA tests and so far all the evidence points to the three brothers,” Buksh said. “The three men have been taken into custody but we are waiting for the full details of the MLC report to be released,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2011.