Two women found dead at beauty salon

Husband and his first wife being treated as main suspects.

LAHORE:

A woman and her niece were found dead with their throats slit in a beauty parlour in Barkat Market, Garden Town police jurisdiction, on Sunday.

A customer walked into the salon at around 4:30pm to find Khadija, 35, and Ambreen, 17, lying in pools of blood. Khadija’s husband Nazim, a barber, has run the beauty parlour for the last 12 years and police are treating him as the main suspect, along with his first wife Shamim, though no first information report of the killings has yet been registered, police investigators said.

Khadija and Ambreen, who lived with her aunt and uncle, both worked at the salon. Nazim had three children with Khadija, his wife of 12 years, and two with Shamim. They lived on Usman Road behind KFC at house number six, while Shamim lives in Kamalia. Ambreen was Nazim’s brother’s daughter.

Model Town Superintendent of Police (Operations) Awais Malik told The Express Tribune that the time of death was around 3pm. He said that the crime scene in the basement indicated that four men had entered the salon to kill the women. He said that Ambreen appeared to have put up some resistance, as there were two cuts to her body (one to the wrist) apart from the fatal cut to the throat. However, the crime scene did not show any evidence of a struggle, he said, as everything appeared to be in its place. The SP said that Nazim and his first wife Shamim were the main suspects in the case.

Nazim, speaking to The Express Tribune at the scene, denied that he had killed his wife. He said that he had left the parlour at 2pm to cut the hair of a man named Mirza Mukhtar in Samanabad. He said that a friend later called to tell him that the police were at his salon, at which point he returned. He said that he had no enmity with anyone.

Police investigators said that Nazim used to have regular fights with Khadija. They said that when Khadija’s brother arrived at the crime scene, he lunged at Nazim calling him a murderer. They said that some family members believed that Nazim had employed his close friend Shaukat alias Shauki Changar to murder his wife. They said that police were investigating a potential property motive for Shamim’s involvement in the killings. They said that Nazim was in police custody being interrogated.

Saleem Hassan, the suspect’s brother, said that Nazim used to have regular fights with Khadija but they were of a petty nature. He said that Nazim and Khadija had a happy marriage.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2011.