Three girls drown - with their father asleep a few feet away

Two of the girls had polio and were disabled since birth.

KARACHI:

Three girls appeared to have drowned noiselessly in the middle of the night, in a 2.5-foot deep trough of water, while their brother and father slept just a short distance away.

The three sisters, two of them disabled, were found floating in a pond inside their house in Orangi Town on Saturday morning. Mominabad police suspect foul play and plan to arrest the girls’ father for triple homicide. However, their hunches end there and they are waiting for the victims’ mother, who is out of town, to return before making arrests.

The family lives in 10-square-foot room in a 700-square-foot cattle farm at Mairajun Nabi Colony in Orangi Town No. 10. They shifted to Karachi from Gujarat about three years ago.

The victims, 15-year-old Uzma, 12-year-old Sumaira, and eight-year-old Nisha were found in a pool of water, six feet wide and across and about 2.5 feet deep used for washing and to water the buffaloes.

The trio were the eldest among four sisters and three brothers and two of them - Uzma and Sumaira - suffered from polio and were disabled since birth. According to their father and prime suspect, Sher Mohammad, their mother, Aneesa Bibi, and one of her sons were visiting her hometown after her uncle’s death last Friday.

Sher Mohammad owns about 18 buffalos and has rented the farm from a man named Rasheed who lives next door and thus, has a relatively stable income.

He claims he woke up at around 5:30 am and found his daughters lying in the pool and immediately informed Rasheed about the tragedy. “I have died. Everything I have is finished. My girls have died,” he lamented repeatedly. In his opinion, the accident must have occurred when his daughters were washing their hands after using the bathroom late at night.

Rasheed claims that when Sher Mohammad woke him up, he gathered some more neighbours and pulled the bodies out of the pond and rushed them to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. “When we saw them, all three girls were dead,” he said. “There was foam coming from their mouths and it appeared that it hadn’t been much time since they died.”

While doctors have not released the post mortem report, medico-legal officer Dr Zakia told The Express Tribune that they have no physical marks of violence on their bodies.

She claimed that initial examination suggests that the girls drowned sometime between 2:30 am and 4 am; however, it is possible that they were also poisoned. They will know more about it after a chemical test.

As news spread, a score of shocked residents gathered at the house.

They claimed that they knew nothing of any possible family dispute and never noticed a disturbance at the house. They said that the victim’s parents had good relations with each other and with their neighbours.

However, one of the residents, speaking anonymously, said that the girls’ parents, especially their father, often worried about their children’s disabilities. “The girls were growing up and the time for their marriage was drawing near, but who would marry them?” he wondered. “This was what was worrying their father. Maybe that is why he killed his daughters.”

The girls’ brother, on the other hand, supported their father’s version. “We had daal roti at night and then we all went to bed,” he said. “Abba and I were sleeping outside and everyone else was sleeping inside.”

Police claim it is too early to peg a cause of death but drowning is their top suspicion at the moment. Sub-inspector Ameer Gondal is the investigation officer in the case.

He said that they have registered an FIR No. 371/11 on behalf of victims’ father against an unidentified person or people and have begun investigating.

“There is no doubt that this is a murder case, because the girls could not have drowned in 2.5 feet of water,” he said. “Even if that happened, there would have been some racket. This is why we have filed it as a murder case.”

He said that police will record the mother’s statements when she returns along with those of some of the neighbours’. A few relatives and neighbours suspect the father. The police plan to follow this lead and eventually arrest Sher Mohammad.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2011.