Man ‘kills father’ over land dispute

Suspect was agitating to grab relatives’ share of property

LODHRAN:

A man allegedly killed his father over a dispute over six biga of land.

Police have registered a murder case against Muhammad Sohail on the complaint of his brother, Muhammad Tufail.

Muhammad Tufail, a resident of Sal Saddar, a suburban area of Lodhran, stated in his complaint with the police that his brother, Sohail, had sold the land he had inherited as his share from the family land and squandered all the proceeds and became broke.

Muhammad Tufail alleged that his brother started pressuring his father to give him more land. His father refused to give him some more share from the family land.

According to the FIR, Muhammad Tufail told the police that he and his brother had been sleeping in their home with their father Karim Bukhsh on the night of September 3 when the murder took place.

He told the police that they didn’t have a toilet in their house so he went outside the house to answer the call of nature.

Muhammad Tufail said that when he returned to the house he found his father’s bed empty. In the meantime he heard his father’s screams from one of the rooms of their house.

“When I entered the room I saw that Sohail had killed our father Karim Bukhsh by striking his head with a wheat-crushing instrument and escaped,” he said.

Police registered a case 699/22 under Section 302 of the PPC against accused Sohail.

Saddar police shifted the body of Karim Bukhsh to the district hospital for postmortem.

While taking immediate notice of the incident, DPO Muhammad Kashif had formed a team headed by the DSP of Saddar and ordered it to arrest the accused immediately.

According to sources, accused Sohail had sold his share of land and was pressuring his father to give him six biga of land from the latter’s share.

In June last year, a man allegedly stabbed his 70-year-old grandfather and four-year-old cousin to death and injured his grandmother, aunt and a two-year-old cousin over a property dispute in Khushab.

Muhammad Adnan, the main suspect, was arrested by Nowshera police and a case was registered against him under Sections 109 and 302.

Hafeezur Rehman, son of slain Nawazul Haq, filed a complaint stating that his uncle Abdul Hafeez had informed him that his nephew Adnan had come to his house at 8pm. He said that he had come from Rawalpindi and had to rest.

“As soon as he entered the house, he started stabbing my father Nawazul Haq. When my mother Malikani Bibi and wife Ghulam Raqiyah went to rescue my father, the suspect also injured them. Adnan also stabbed and injured my young daughters Maryam Alvi and Shifa Alvi, one after the other,” the complainant stated.

Later, 70-year-old Nawazul Haq and four-year-old Maryam died of their injuries.

After the incident, the injured were shifted to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital Nowshera. Meanwhile, the deceased were buried after postmortem in the graveyard of their native village.

Nowshera SHO Amir Shehzad said that the suspect Adnan had been arrested and strict legal action was being taken against him.

In a similar incident in March 2021, a man, his pregnant wife and two children were murdered allegedly by his father in Kotli Kokian.

There was an atmosphere of gloom in the village after the incident. According to local people, both the children were beaten to death with an iron rod in front of their mother. Later on, the woman was also killed.

According to the police report, the incident took place in Kotli Kokian village of Motra area.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 5^th, 2022.