A woman’s right to choose: The deadly cost of independence

Father kills daughters for refusing to marry according to his wishes and insisting on pursuing higher education.

MULTAN:

A man killed his two daughters after they refused to get married until they completed their education.

According to police officials, Teeratwala Marral residents Aasma and Samreen were killed after they refused to get married according to their father’s wishes. Chaudary Noor Meu is a local landlord and belongs to a powerful feudal family of the area. “Noor blatantly told us that we had no business interfering in his ‘family matter’. He admitted he had killed his daughters but also said that he had every right to do so,” said SSP (Operations) Malik Yousuf.

Noor Meu had fixed the marriage of his daughters without informing them. A neighbour of the family, Tasneem, said that both girls had no idea that their marriage had been fixed within the family. Asma, 23, and Samreen,21, refused the match once they were told and said that they wished to complete their education.

“Asma wanted to be a doctor and she was very bright. Both these girls fought with their father for weeks refusing to marry the men he had chosen for them,” she said. Tasneem said that both the girls wanted to get married according to their own wishes. They had been studying in intermediate and wanted to continue their education.

“I tried to tell them that their father would never accept them marrying outside of his wishes but they refused to back down,” she said.

Chaudary Meu initially tried to force the girls into the marriage but they began to tell their relatives and their neighbours about the situation. “Samreen had told us that she feared he would kill them but that they couldn’t go through with it,” said Tasneem. Police eventually confirmed that both girls had been tortured and then poisoned.

On Friday afternoon, Tasneem and other neighbours of the family called the police when they heard a commotion outside Meu’s house. Police arrived at the scene while Meu and his relatives were burying the bodies outside their house. “He had poisoned them and they were trying to bury them in secret in a patch of land behind the house,” Yousuf said. The landlords also beat up three reporters and a cameraman who arrived at the scene with police officials.

Police officials arrived at the spot but were threatened by the relatives of the accused. “There were over a dozen landlords and they were armed. There were only four police officials but they called in back up,” said a local, who witnessed the incident, Arif.

SSP Yousuf said that a team of police officials entered the house and discovered that four people were burying the bodies outside. “We caught them burying the bodies in the backyard and we excavated them,” he said. Police officials have sent both bodies to Nishtar Hospital for an autopsy.

“The family kept telling us that the girls had committed suicide but we are waiting on autopsy results,” said Yousuf.

Noor Meu eventually admitted to police that he had killed the girls to preserve his honour in the community. “They were headstrong and corrupt. My daughters said they would choose their own husbands and I would rather they be dead,” he said. “This is a family matter and is of no concern for the police. They were my daughters and how they should have been dealt with was my decision,” Meu said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2011.