Sindh University student was ‘forced’ to kill herself: police

Hyderabad police announced student was under pressure from a man named Anis Khaskheli

HYDERABAD: A Sindh University student who was found dead in her hostel room was forced to kill herself after facing immense pressure from a man named Anis Khaskheli, announced Hyderabad police on Friday.

“The media will be surprised to hear that this is also a murder,” Hyderabad DIG Khadim Hussain Rind told a press conference on Friday.



The DIG said N*, a final-year student of the Sindhi department whose body was found hanging from the ceiling fan of her room in the undergraduate hostel on January 1, committed suicide. Rind attributed her act to alleged blackmail and refusal of the deceased’s marriage proposal by a suspect, Anis Khaskheli, who graduated from SU’s English department in 2008.



According to the DIG, the two became friends on Facebook around three months before N’s death and that the interaction gradually developed into a relationship. “He [Khaskheli] began trapping the girl over three months ago ... when her MA final exams ended she told him it’s time to marry,” the DIG told. “Anis is a habitual criminal. He has done this with many other girls,” he added, estimating the number of such women at about 30.

The DIG and Jamshoro district’s SSP Tariq Wilayat maintained that Khaskheli allegedly kept a record of illicit photographs and videos of these girls, including N.

The officials said they also interviewed girls who were present at the hostel that day. “They told us that N was very upset after returning from his village. She was also taking tablets to treat malaria.” The police also claimed to have found two empty strips of a sleeping pill in the dustbin outside N’s room.

Khaskheli, who was detained from his residence in Jamshoro on January 4, will be booked in an FIR under sections 315 and 509 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), 6/7 of the Anti Terrorism Act (ATA) and 9 and 13 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act. The case, the officials said, will be lodged on the complaint of N’s family, which has continued to express dissatisfaction with both the police and SU’s probes. The family could not be contacted for their version.

The DIG explained that Section 315 of the PPC applied in this particular case because ‘a human [was] exploited so much mentally or physically that they died’. The section carries the punishment of a life sentence. Section 509 pertains to insulting modesty or sexual harassment.



The ATA’s sections 6/7 will be inserted because the death spread terror among the students and parents. “Many girls are not coming to the hostels. Parents are also thinking about terminating the higher education of their daughters.”

The police have also decided to add the Prevention of Electronic Crimes sections in the FIR because the medium of electronic communication was allegedly used in the crime. “Both of them deleted complete data from their mobile phones. But the CDR [call data record] helped the police trace Anis,” said SSP Wilayat.

According to the SSP, the only remaining SMS of Khaskheli to N read ‘Sorry! Wrong number’.  He claimed to have retrieved 20 GB of data from the deleted files. The DIG said the investigation of N’s death will help the other victims of such exploitation to reach out to the police for protection.

The aggrieved family reached the police station for to register the FIR on Friday evening but the case was not lodged till the filing of this report.

*Name has been changed to protect privacy

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2017.