Wajiha Swati’s body handed over to heirs

US-Pakistani woman’s body being transported to US for burial

RAWALPINDI:

The body of a US-Pakistani woman, Wajiha Swati, was handed over to legal heirs on Thursday after the interior ministry issued a no-objection certificate to transfer the body to the United States.

The body was first shifted to Rawalpindi Medical College from the Rawalpindi District Hospital in the presence of US embassy officials.

US embassy officials and heirs examined the body and signed the receiving documents. Later, the body was shifted to the Islamabad airport in a sealed casket. The body will be transported to the US tonight. The body of the victim will be sent to the United States via Qatar Airways.

Earlier, the family and children of the victim woman had requested the Pakistani authorities to allow them to shift the body to the US for burial.

A heavy contingent of police led by the superintendent of police handed over the body to the heirs. The body was kept in the mortuary of the district headquarters hospital for the last 12 days.

Read Ex-husband confesses to killing Wajiha Swati

Wajiha Swati had reached Pakistan on October 16 from the US via the UK and was brutally murdered the next day by her former husband Rizwan Habib and his accomplices.

The body was transported to Khyber-Pakhtunkwa by the killers and it remained buried in a deep pit for 63 days before the Rawalpindi police recovered it and shifted it to Rawalpindi.

The police have arrested the slain woman’s ex-husband Rizwan Habib, his father, their domestic worker and three other accused.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2022.