On mother’s complaint: Body of newlywed bride exhumed

Parents suspect young woman was poisoned by her in-laws

HARIPUR: The body of a newlywed woman was exhumed to determine the exact cause of her sudden death in a village of Hattar union council on Friday.

A team headed by Judicial Magistrate Asim Riaz, Dr Nagina, Dr Aleena Shah exhumed the body of 20-year-old Nadia.

Nadia, the daughter of Abdul Rasheed, had been married to Imran Khan of the Shadi village near the Hattar Industrial Estate, around a year ago.

The marriage had been arranged and the couple did not have any children.

Rasheed recounted that on September 25, he had gone to his agricultural fields with other family members as usual. When he returned, he heard an announcement through the village’s mosque that his daughter had passed away and that her funeral prayers would be offered later that night.

He explained that when he and his wife rushed to Nadia’s home, their in-laws told them that she had suddenly died and that they did not know what had happened.

Because they were poor and his daughter’s in-laws were influential and financially sound, Rasheed said he kept quiet and did not ask too many questions at the time.

However Rasheed later questioned villagers about what had happened and someone informed him that his daughter had reportedly been poisoned to death by her mother-in-law Nasrin Bibi, and father-in-law Farman.

Rasheed subsequently filed a complaint and the Hattar police requested the judicial magistrate for permission to exhume the body and to carry out a post-mortem to ascertain the exact cause of death.

Consequently, the exhumation was carried out in the presence of the judicial magistrate and doctors on Friday.

According to Dr Nagina, they had collected the required samples from Nadia’s stomach and other body parts and have sent them for chemical analysis to determine whether she was, as alleged, poisoned to death or there was some other cause of her death.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2016.