Exhumation ordered in child maid murder case

Govt forms medical board for autopsy of 10-year-old girl allegedly beaten to death by influential employers

HYDERABAD:

The Naushehro Feroze district and sessions court on Friday ordered exhumation of the body of 10-year-old housemaid Fatima Phuriro, who allegedly died of torture at the home of an influential spiritual leader in the Ranipur Town of Khairpur.

District and Sessions Judge Mahbub Ally Jawahery directed the civil judge and judicial magistrate to supervise the exhumation.

Separately, the health authorities have constituted a four-member medical board to exhume the girl’s body for postmortem.

The board comprises the medical superintendent of the People’s Medical University (PMU) Hospital Nawabshah, a pathology professor from PMU, a forensic expert from Peoples University of Medical and Health Sciences for Women and a woman medical officer.

Police surgeon at the PMU has been asked to fix a date for the exhumation at the earliest.

Earlier, the Ranipur police station, in whose limits the incident happened, wrote a letter to the court seeking permission for disinterring the body for the medical examination under supervision of magistrate concerned. The police had also set up a picket on the girl’s grave at the Khan Wah Graveyard to prevent anyone from tampering the evidence.

The Khairpur police on Thursday arrested Pir Syed Asad Shah Jilani, in whose Haveli the girl used to work, a physician Dr Fateh Memon and his compounder, and Ranipur police station SHO Ameer Ali Chang.

The victim’s mother Shabnum Phuriro, has nominated Jilani and his wife, Syeda Hina Shah, under sections 302 and 34 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) in the FIR.

According to Shabnum, her daughter used to complain against the couple, telling that they extorted a lot of physical labour and that she got beaten for minor lapses. She stated that on August 14 she received a call from a relative who told her that the girl had passed away due to some illness.

She claimed that when she reached the Haveli and saw the girl’s body she found marks of torture at her left arm, neck and back. However, the complainant was told that her daughter died after remaining critically ill for three days. Her questions regarding the bruises were not answered.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2023.