Pakistan

Deranged: Captain confesses to murdering his family

Retired surgeon, along with wife and two daughters were found shot dead last week.

Fawad Ali October 07, 2013

The accused was apparently in love with a woman, also a doctor, and wanted to marry her but his parents were against the idea, said a police official investigating the case. PHOTO: FILE

RAWALPINDI:

An army medical officer has ‘confessed’ to have killed his father Brigadier Dr Sikandar Ali Malik, mother and two sisters.

“I gave them intoxicated juice and shot all of them dead when they fell unconscious,” Captain Haider Abbas, a medical officer posted in Kharian Cantt told the police. He said he had killed his parents and two sisters to remove all barriers in his way to marry the woman he loved.

Talking to The Express Tribune, an army officer, requesting anonymity, said that Abbas’s parents were a hurdle in the way of his marriage.

“I wanted to live my life with the girl I loved, not with them. Why did they oppose me?” the officer quoted him as saying.

The accused was apparently in love with a woman, also a doctor, and wanted to marry her but his parents were against the idea, said a police official investigating the case.

He said there were suspicions of his involvement at the time of the crime as according to Haider’s initial statement to the police he heard gunshots but did not come out of his room due to fear. “He was very relaxed on the day and we were pretty sure that he was the main culprit and when he was brought for interrogation he confessed within seconds,” said the army official.

He will first be court-martialled and then handed over to the police for investigation and trial, said the official, adding that the army was ashamed of such a cowardly officer who killed his family because he couldn’t convince them.

Brig (retd) Sikandar Malik, an orthopaedic surgeon, his wife Shahida and two daughters, Fatima Sikandar, 20 and Zainab Sikandar, 23, were shot dead on the night of October 1 at their house in Gulistan Colony in the jurisdiction of Morgah Police Station.

The family belonged to Sialkot and was residing in the highly-secure residential colony of Al-Shifa Medical Trust in Rawalpindi. The deceased brigadier was also the director of Yusra Medical and Dental College in Soan.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2013.