Four men have been arrested by police on suspicion of having murdered and mutilated two college students in Multan.
According to police officials, Amir, Abdul Majeed, Saleem and Shahid had a grievance against Abdul Sattar and Hussain. Locals in the area said that the men were suspected of having relations with Abdul Majeed’s sisters.
On Sunday night, Amir and Majeed called Abdul Sattar and Hussain to the fields in Ghareebabad on some pretext. When the two men arrived, Majeed and his accomplices tied them up and strung them from a tree. The men were stabbed and killed and their bodies were severely mutilated. “It was hard to identify the bodies. The noses, ears and fingers had been chopped off and their eyes had been scooped out,” said Nishtar Hospital attending Dr Jamshed. “I examined the bodies and both men had been dead for over two days. The bodies were already decomposing when they were brought to us. It was not possible to conduct an autopsy,” he said. Dr Jamshed confirmed that the men had been hung. “There were clear rope marks so we know they died either from strangulation or after they were stabbed,” he said.
Locals discovered the bodies two days after the incident on Tuesday morning after an unknown person had strung the decomposing corpses by a tree. A large crowd soon gathered at the site and staged a protest. Police officials were called to the scene and removed the bodies to send them for medical testing.
“I saw the bodies hanging by the tree as I was making my way to the fields in the morning,” said farmer Haq Nawaz, adding “I couldn’t believe my eyes and then I called everyone in the village.”
“After we established who the boys were, because they had been missing from their homes, we immediately suspected Majeed and his friends. There had been a rumour that he planned to kill them for having an affair with his sisters,” said Ghareebabad resident Humera Bibi.
District Superintendent (DSP) Khalid Rauf said that the police had arrived at the scene as soon as they received information about the bodies.
“Someone called us and reported that two bodies were hanging by a tree but no one knew how they got there. It was obvious the men had been butchered,” he said. “We then sent the bodies for an autopsy but the doctors told us they were already decomposing and it was hard to conduct a proper autopsy. However, we know that they were hung and stabbed,” Rauf added.
Station House Officer (SHO) Yousaf Lashari said that the police had arrested Amir, Abdul Majeed, Saleem and Shahid on suspicion but that they were conducting a full investigation.
“The facts of the case are hard to determine and we are trying to gather evidence. Villagers say that these men had an enmity with the boys because of them having relations with their sisters. That needs to be established,” he said.
Majeed’s sisters Arifa and Sameena refused to comment on the situation. The families of Sattar and Hussain have protested and demanded that police immediately register cases against the accused.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 27th, 2011.
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