Husband-killing case: Zainab did not act alone, butcher pitched in with professional skills

Victim Ahmed Abbas apparently left the army, dated women on the side.

KARACHI:

Only a professional butcher could have chopped up Zainab’s husband — the cuts were unnervingly clean. This is what the police started to suspect as the initial shock wore off in the nauseating murder of the young man that hit the headlines this week.

And indeed, in subsequent questioning, the Green Town suspects — Zainab and her nephew Zaheer — started spilling their guts. A relative named Rajab, the ‘kasai’, has thus become an additional suspect and the hunt is on for him.

Zainab’s daughter Sonia is, however, still missing, said investigation officer Ghulam Abbas.

Some pieces to the puzzle have come from Zaheer, Zainab’s nephew, who told the Shah Faisal Colony police that he had recently come from his hometown Bahawalnagar. According to him, a night before the murder, Abbas had brutally beaten Zainab and Sonia. “Sonia was away from home the whole day at her uncle’s house at UP Morr. I was there too. But when I came to drop Sonia, her father started beating me with cable cords, saying that I was interested in her.”

Showing the marks on his leg, Zaheer said that he could not walk therefore had to spend the night at their house. In the morning, he called their relative Rajab, the butcher, to take him home.

By that time, Zainab had sedated her husband, and then with the help of Rajab and Zaheer had chained him up while they strangled him. “Zainab wanted to dispose of the body in a carton and throw it away. But we found no carton,” said Zaheer. “Hence we left the body under the charpoy, and I went over to slept at Rajab’s house.” Sonia was sent to the house where Zainab worked as a domestic worker. In the morning, the three of them returned and Rajab started chopping up the body.

“His eyes were blood red, and he was sweating profusely,” said Zaheer. “Rajab was cutting the body like he was cutting an animal. Zainab was cleaning the blood on the floor.”

Zainab then put the pieces in the pots, and added haldi or tumeric to change the colour. According to Zaheer, Rajab ran away before the police came.

The victim

The fair-skinned Ahmed Abbas, who worked as a security guard, was almost 12 years younger than Zainab. Police said that he had run away from the army. He belonged to Shah Muhammad village in Haripur district near Abbotabad. His remains are at the Edhi morgue.

The police have found Abbas’s personal diary. It is full of romantic Urdu couplets and pictures of Abbas with young girls at Sea view, which is one of the reasons why Zainab said she was not on good terms with him. She said he was “not sincere” with her and had an eye on her daughter Sonia.

A visibly tired Zainab, who has been giving interview after interview, said that Abbas was friends with people living in her building.”He became acquainted with my brothers, and gradually he started noticing me,” she said. “He showered love and affection on my daughter, and when he proposed, I accepted as he seemed really sincere.” But she became estranged from her family after the marriage as she was a Punjabi from Pakpattan and her new husband was Pathan.

They married in 2007 but two years into the marriage Zainab claims they started fighting. She told the police that Abbas had divorced her three days before the murder. “He tore up the Nikkah papers. When I asked him to leave, he started beating me and said he would not leave.” Zainab claims that the sleeping pills she used were in fact brought by the husband for her.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 27^th, 2011.