Who killed the baby?


Express July 14, 2010

MULTAN: A husband allegedly killed his one-and -half year old daughter after an argument with his wife.

In the Pul Bararan area, Shakir Ali and his wife Farzana had an argument regarding her going to her parent’s house. “Whenever I asked him for money to buy groceries, he would yell at me and hit me so I told him to take me to my parent’s house,” Farzana said.  According to Ali, his wife did not like his meeting any of his relatives and when one of his aunts recently fell sick, he visited her.

“After my aunt died we attended the funeral and my brother’s family came to visit my house,” he said. Ali said that when one of his nephews tried playing with his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Kulsoom, his wife threw a fit and snatched the child away.

“I followed her to see what had happened but the door to the room was locked and when she opened it Kulsoom was lying on the floor and her head was bashed in,” Ali said.  He said that he grabbed the child and ran outside to take her to the hospital when his wife started screaming that he had murdered the baby and villagers gathered at the commotion. “The police came for me while I was at the hospital because my wife had called them,” he said.

Farzana, on the other hand, said that she had married Ali three years ago and was his second wife.

“He didn’t provide for me or my child and so I insisted that he take me to my parents so that I could at least give my daughter proper food,” she said, adding “When I told him I was leaving, he grabbed hold of my daughter and smashed her head into a wall and then on the ground,” she said. The situation escalated to the extent that on Tuesday, when Farzana asked for money to buy milk for Kulsoom, Ali flew into a rage. “He grabbed our daughter and smashed her head to the ground,” Farzana said, adding that Kulsoom died on the spot.

Farzana said that she and her husband took their daughter to the Nishtar Hospital but their daughter was already dead by the time they reached the hospital.  “I called the police station because he killed my daughter and I am scared he will kill me next,” she said. Ali says that his wife planned his arrest and killed their daughter in their bed room.

Gulgasht police station has registered a case against Shakir Ali on Farzana’s complaint. Ali has been arrested and is in police custody. Station House Officer Fayaz Ahmed Khan said that the case would be investigated on merit, “there are two conflicting accounts to the child’s death. We need to conduct a thorough investigation to see if it was the father or mother that really did it,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 15th, 2010.

COMMENTS (1)

Dajjal | 13 years ago | Reply A couple of Dogs walking by the scene of the Crime were overheard saying "Ashraf-ul-Makhloqat at their finest"....
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