Till ‘betrayal’ do us part

Intercommunal marriage ends up in husband allegedly murdering wife

LAHORE:

A woman who had contracted a love marriage 20 years ago and embraced Islam on the insistence of her husband was allegedly stabbed to death by her spouse in Liaqatabad, police said.

They said that the motive behind the murder was the woman’s act of allowing her daughter to contract a love marriage, an act her husband had opposed vehemently.

SHO Imran Anwaar Sheikh told The Express Tribune that the suspect, Yasir, had had a grudge against his wife Amna for allowing their daughter to marry of her own choice. Amna, too, had been unhappy with Yasir for his behavior. She dumped him and went back to living with her parents after her daughter had gotten married.

Giving a chronology of the events that culminated in the woman’s murder allegedly by her husband, SHO Imran Anwaar Sheikh said that he had been woken up by a telephone call at four o’clock in the morning.

The caller had told him that a woman had been stabbed outside a flat and the suspect had fled.

He said that he, along with a team, rushed to the spot where he found the victim lying in a pool of blood and crying in agony. The police, with the help from Rescue 1122, had been taking her to hospital but she died on the way, said the SHO.

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The police officer said that they immediately opened their investigation into the murder and contacted the family of the slain woman, who told them that her husband had attacked her.

They gave the police the suspect’s address, but police did not find him there.

The suspect’s family told the police that he had left home sometime after midnight when they had been asleep and that they hadn’t heard from him since.

For the SHO time was of the essence since he feared that if they failed to hunt him down immediately, the suspect would find a safe haven.

However, being a police officer, SHO Imran had had an insight that the suspect would definitely contact his family before going into permanent hiding.

He tasked a subordinate of his with keeping track of the family and tapping their phones.

SHO Imran’s anticipation turned out to be right, and Yasir did call his brother, allegedly telling him that he had attacked his wife and also informing his brother about his plans to leave the city, for which he had been heading for the Lorry Ada.

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With this information at their disposal, the police moved swiftly. In the meantime, a policeman had been tasked with keeping a watch on the suspect’s family who had already been warned against giving the suspect any hint about the fact that that the police had found out about his whereabouts.

The suspect again contacted his family and told them that he had been riding a bike which he would dump at Mozang Chowk and continue his journey onwards in a rickshaw. The police arrived at the Mozang Chowk before the suspect. And soon the suspect was in their custody.

During the interrogation, he allegedly told the police that he had murdered his wife because she had played a role in getting his teenage daughter married to a person she liked. His daughter had been living with his mother so he didn’t even know when his daughter got married. He allegedly told the police that he had killed his wife in the name of honour.

However, the family of the slain woman rejected the suspect’s claims.

The late Amna’s sister said that if it had been a matter of honour for Yasir, then he would have killed his daughter and not his wife.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2023.