Aggravated assault: Husband mutilates wife over argument

Doctors say victim will survive but will need plastic surgery to restore her nose and lips.

MULTAN:

A woman was admitted to Nishtar Hospital on Sunday after her nose and lips were severed allegedly by her husband following a minor argument.

Doctors at the hospital told The Express Tribune that while there was no danger to the victim’s life they would soon perform plastic surgery on her to restore the facial features damaged in the assault.

Deputy Medical Superintendent Dr Ayub Qazi said surgery was the only way to repair the damaged nose and lips. He said the facility was available at the hospital and would be carried out after a rigorous examination of the victim’s face by a panel of expert doctors.

Talking to the Tribune, the victim, a resident of Darag area on Punjab-Balochistan border, said her husband came home late on Saturday night and started arguing with her accusing her, of seeing other men during his absence. “He would occasionally beat me over suspicions that I had developed a relationship with someone else,” she said. She said the couple went to sleep after the argument.

At dawn, she said, she woke as her husband was trying to tie her hands with a rope. She said he had already tied up her legs, and he told her that from now he would tie her up before leaving for work. “He said he suspected that I leave home after he is gone to work. He said by tying me up and restricting my freedom he could go to work in peace,” he said. She said on shouting and calling for help, her husband started beating her and cut off her nose and lips with a knife. She said he later fled. She said people gathered at her house on hearing her cries and called her uncle to the scene. She said she was taken to a hospital by her uncle.

Her uncle told the Tribune that he took the victim to the Taunsa tehsil headquarters (THQ) hospital from where she was referred to Nishtar Hospital in Multan.

An FIR has been registered against the suspect in Karkana police station in Musakhel, Balochistan. The village is in the tribal areas on both sides of the Punjab-Balcohistan border and shares a boundary with Taunsa tehsil of Dera Ghazi Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20^th, 2011.