Woman ‘arrested for murder’ goes missing

Sister says Riffat was picked up by police; officials deny the incident.

ISLAMABAD:

A 26-year-old mother of two, prime suspect in a murder case, went missing after being allegedly picked up by the Faisalabad police.

Riffat Abdul Majeed was living in one of her sister’s house in Rawalpindi when she was picked up. Riffat, a resident of Faisalabad, was a suspect in the murder case of her brother-in-law.

“On the morning of April 15, six people, three of them wearing police uniforms and the rest in plain clothes, entered our house,” Sibghat Abdul Majeed, 20, Riffat’s sister, told The Express Tribune. They are seven siblings, six sisters and one brother.

“There were no [female police officials] with them and when one of my sisters tried to resist, they threw her on the floor. They dragged us out of the house by pulling our hair and did not even give us a chance to wear dupattas or slippers,” she added.

When the family visited Chak Jhumra Police Station, where she was reportedly taken, they were told that Riffat had already been released. But she never came back home and the family continues to wonder about her whereabouts.

Riffat was forced into marrying one of her cousins, Arshad Ali, in 2003. Ali had already been married twice and had children. He was working in Saudi Arabia but his family was settled in Gojra.

There Riffat faced “severe” domestic violence from her sister and mother-in-law. “They used to beat her up even when she was eight months pregnant,” Sibghat added.

Later, when the situation became intolerable for Riffat, she came to Rawalpindi where one of her sister was settled. She got divorced from her husband in 2009. Her children were taken away by her in-laws, said Sibghat.

“She was dying to meet her children. Taking advantage of this, Imran (her brother-in-law) called her and said he could arrange a meeting with her children,” she said.

When he witnessed her eagerness to meet her children, he started blackmailing her. During this time Imran was kidnapped and murdered  under mysterious circumstances and the last call he attended on his cellphone was from Riffat. “This made her a suspect in the case,” she added.

Subsequently, Faisalabad police traced all those people who got calls from Riffat’s cell. This included her father, brother and one of her sisters. All of them were arrested on suspicion.

On April 26, according to Sibghat, the police picked up her brother, father and another sister. “They brutally tortured my brother Nawaz in front of my father, which made him lose his mental balance. They also beat up my three-month-pregnant sister. No [female police official] was there,” she added.

Sibghat believes one of their cousin has bribed the police officials to harass them, to get Riffat to agree to marry him. “He has also warned me that if I do not obey him, he would give money to the police to get my brother killed in an encounter,” she said, adding, “We all are terrified, police will kill us therefore we all have taken refuge at various places.”

Mohammad Rafique, an ASI of Chak Jhumra Police Station denied that they had picked Riffat from Rawalpindi and had Nawaz in their custody. However, a copy of the FIR made available to The Express Tribune mentions that the police had released Nawaz after keeping him in custody.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2011.