Murder case registered against ETO, four other people

Wife of deceased, a maid by occupation, says her employer killed her husband

KURIANWALA:

Police registered a case under the provisions of murder against five suspects, including an ETO of the Excise Department and his wife.

Police said that Halima Shafi, the complainant in the case and widow of Abid Maqbool, residing at the Officers’ Colony near the Jail Road, told them in her complaint that she had been a maid in the house of the ETO, who had provided her with a quarter to live with her husband.

The complainant said that she accidentally learnt about an alleged family secret.

Halima Shafi alleged that the suspects started torturing her, along with her husband, over trivial matters “so that we do not tell this [secret] to anyone”.

The complainant said that a few days later she went to attend her brother's wedding ceremony.

Halima told the police that her husband Abid Maqbool had called her on the night of October 26 and told her that the suspects had been allegedly beating him up. They had shaved his head and were threatening to kill him.

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The complainant told the police that after saying all that her husband switched off his phone.

She said that she kept trying to contact her husband but could not get through.

Halima told the police that the following day, she, along with Zahid Maqbool and Sardaran Bibi, returned to her house and knocked on the door, but nobody opened the door. She then tried to contact her husband by phone but could not get through.

In the meantime, the suspects appeared, beat her up and ordered her to leave, she told the police.

Halima alleged in her complaint that the “suspects had killed her husband Abid Maqbool” but were claiming that he had committed suicide.

Police took possession of the body of the deceased and registered a case under Sections 302, 147 and 149 of the PPC.

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The SHO of the Civil Line Police Station, Tariq Ameer, said that the decision whether to arrest the suspects or not would be taken after the postmortem report.

Meanwhile, the ETO of Excise, in his statement to the police, said that Abid’s wife, Halima Shafi, had been a domestic worker at his house, and he had also given a quarter to her to live there with her husband. No one had tortured Abid Maqbool, “but he was mentally ill, and he committed suicide by hanging himself from a fan hook with a noose around his neck”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 30^th, 2023.