Man appeals to superior judiciary after losing family and private parts in attack

Sajjad Pathan blames his ‘influential’ in-laws for attacking him, kidnapping his wife and son.

HYDERABAD:

It will be another month before Sajjad Pathan is able to walk again after his private parts were severed from his body some three weeks ago.

Pathan has accused his in-laws of attacking him and kidnapping his wife and child and is now pinning his hopes for justice on the Sindh High Court and Supreme Court.

“The judiciary should take notice of how my tormentors have destroyed my life,” he appealed at a press conference at the press club on Saturday.

The 24-year-old man was brought to Civil hospital on October 24 in critical condition. His wife, A, and one year old son were missing when the police arrived - Pathan claims they were forcibly taken by her family. His wife, A, resurfaced eighteen days later, on November 10. In her statement recorded at a civil court in Hyderabad, she claims that she does not know who attacked her husband. “I was at home that day when four people came and threatened to kill me and my son if I didn’t return to my parents,” she told the court.

But Pathan and his family are certain that A was pressured into making that statement. “My in-laws threatened that they would kill my son if she dared take my side,” he said. “I was conscious when my in-laws and their accomplices were torturing me. I am the prime witness of that crime.”

The two had eloped, without the consent of A’s parents, in April 2010. The then 19-year-old A made an announcement in a regional newspaper, stating that she had married of her own free will. Pathan wants the higher judiciary to take up the matter and to protect him, his wife and his child.

On October 24, he registered an FIR under sections 334, 337, 452, 363, 109 and others, including those for kidnapping and torture. A’s father Ghulam Hussain Buriro, brother Sarwan Buriro, cousin Zaheer Buriro and four other unidentified people have been implicated in the case. According to Pathan, the police have so far made two unsuccessful raids in Karachi and Sanghar to look for them. “They are influential people - my father-in-law is a landlord and an officer at a bank,” he alleged. “He is bribing the police who are helping him evade arrest.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2011.