Axe attack: Woman’s eye, jaw damaged

She was attacked by former brothers-in-law while protecting her son.

GUJRANWALA:

A woman lost her right eye and suffered severe injuries to her jaws in an assault on Saturday allegedly by her former in-laws.

Shamim Bibi was taken to Gujranwala district headquarters (DHQ) hospital where doctors treating her said she will survive. But, they also said, her jaws were fractured and that they would perform a surgery to repair them on Monday. Deputy Medical Superintendent Dr Shabbir Satra told The Express Tribune that Shamim Bibi had been given first aid and would be kept under observation for a couple of days. He said her right eye was beyond help.

Qila Deedar Singh police have registered an FIR against the suspects under Section 324 (attempt to murder) of the Pakistan Penal Code and started raids for their arrest, Station House Officer Hafiz Imtiaz told The Tribune.

The FIR, registered on a complaint by Amjad Hussain, Shamim Bibi’s husband, accuses her three former brothers-in-law of attacking her with an axe in an assault at her home in Kamo Milli area.

It said she had come in the way of the assailants to protect her son from her first husband, Faisal Ahmed, from their attack. “They had come to beat up Ahmed who accused them of stealing several pigeons from his home in his absence,” the FIR read.

Talking to The Tribune at the hospital, Faisal Ahmed alleged that all of the pigeons he had kept in a cage on the roof of his house had gone missing a couple of days ago. He said he suspected his uncles, whose house was a few blocks away, of stealing the birds and selling them.

He said his mother had married one of her cousins, Amjad Hussain, after she and his father divorced 14 years ago. He said he had moved with his mother and had been living with her.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 29^th, 2012.