Demanding justice: Bereaved mother challenges police findings
Claims her daughter was murdered and did not commit suicide.
RAWALPINDI:
A widow, Umme Kulsoom, has challenged Sohawa police’s findings which suggest that her daughter, who died of burns in Jehlum last year, had committed suicide after being refused to visit her parents’ house.
In a petition filed with the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on Saturday, Kaloom has requested that a criminal case be registered against her daughter’s in-laws for burning her daughter alive.
She has accused Ghulam Rabbani, Khadija Zainab, Ashfaq Ahmed, Tasleem Akhtar her daughter’s father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband, sister-in-law, along with her sister-in-law’s husband, Rafaqat Hussain, for their involvement in her daughter’s murder. The court is likely to take up the petition next week.
The petitioner, through her lawyer Muhammad Idrees, informed the court that her daughter, Abeeda, was “under constant pressure from her in-laws for failing to bear a child even after 15 years of marriage”. She said that her daughter’s in-laws did not inform her of her daughter’s death until her body was being shifted from a hospital in Kharian on June 18, 2010.
She claimed that after the burial some local women confided in her that her daughter had been burnt to death by her in-laws.
When she approached the Sohawa police on June 19, they refused to register a murder case against her daughter’s in-laws. She also claimed that the police had not recorded statements of the doctor who attended her daughter at the rural health centre in Sohawa where she was first taken and was conscious at the time.
The report by Sohawa police stated that Abeeda committed suicide and relieved all the accused of the charges levelled against them. It also stated that the victim’s husband, Ashfaq, was not present at the house at the time of her death.
Meanwhile, Kulsoom also approached the area magistrate, which allowed her daughter’s body to be exhumed for post-mortem. The post mortem report confirmed that Abeeda died of burns, however, it could not determine whether she was murdered or if she committing suicide.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 3rd, 2011.
A widow, Umme Kulsoom, has challenged Sohawa police’s findings which suggest that her daughter, who died of burns in Jehlum last year, had committed suicide after being refused to visit her parents’ house.
In a petition filed with the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on Saturday, Kaloom has requested that a criminal case be registered against her daughter’s in-laws for burning her daughter alive.
She has accused Ghulam Rabbani, Khadija Zainab, Ashfaq Ahmed, Tasleem Akhtar her daughter’s father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband, sister-in-law, along with her sister-in-law’s husband, Rafaqat Hussain, for their involvement in her daughter’s murder. The court is likely to take up the petition next week.
The petitioner, through her lawyer Muhammad Idrees, informed the court that her daughter, Abeeda, was “under constant pressure from her in-laws for failing to bear a child even after 15 years of marriage”. She said that her daughter’s in-laws did not inform her of her daughter’s death until her body was being shifted from a hospital in Kharian on June 18, 2010.
She claimed that after the burial some local women confided in her that her daughter had been burnt to death by her in-laws.
When she approached the Sohawa police on June 19, they refused to register a murder case against her daughter’s in-laws. She also claimed that the police had not recorded statements of the doctor who attended her daughter at the rural health centre in Sohawa where she was first taken and was conscious at the time.
The report by Sohawa police stated that Abeeda committed suicide and relieved all the accused of the charges levelled against them. It also stated that the victim’s husband, Ashfaq, was not present at the house at the time of her death.
Meanwhile, Kulsoom also approached the area magistrate, which allowed her daughter’s body to be exhumed for post-mortem. The post mortem report confirmed that Abeeda died of burns, however, it could not determine whether she was murdered or if she committing suicide.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 3rd, 2011.