Woman burnt alive for refusing second marriage permission

Police register FIR 20 days after incident, arrest suspect

TANK: A woman was allegedly burnt alive by her husband in Tank district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa after she refused to grant him permission for a second marriage.

It took over 20 days for the incident to come to light when she succumbed to her injuries at the Christian hospital on Tuesday and a first information report was lodged by the police.

The victim’s father, Mohammad Khan, told the Mureed Akbar Shaheed police that his daughter had been forcibly married to Faiz Mohammad when she was just 17-years-old. The two lived in Garah Akoro Khan Village of Tank. The two, he said, had developed some differences after Faiz asked his wife’s permission for contracting a second marriage.



“This [second marriage demand] of her husband led to domestic issues in my daughter’s family and then the husband doused my daughter with petrol and burnt her,” the girl’s father told the police, adding that Faiz pretended that his wife had set herself on fire.

He demanded that the government launch a high-level investigation into the murder and provide them with justice. He further lamented that the police failed to lodge a complaint about the incident even as the hospital kept treating his daughter.

The police, though, has arrested the suspect after an FIR was registered by the victim’s father.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2017.