Second wife poisoned to make way for third

AWAN SHARIF: A husband allegedly administered a poisonous injection to his wife and killed her over a dispute regarding his desire to take a third wife.

According to Gujrat police officials, a team arrested homeopathic doctor Shams on charges of having poisoned his wife and trying to pass the incident off as a suicide.   Shams’s 28-year-old wife Zobia was a mother of three children. His neighbours told police officials that she was killed because he had openly stated that he wanted to take a third wife.

“She refused to give her consent and said that she would leave him and take her children,” Nilofer Khan, Zobia’s neighbour said. “She told me several days ago that she was beginning to feel scared that he would harm her but that she would not tolerate his third marriage,” Khan said.

Gujrat station house officer (SHO) Humayun Chattha said that after administering the injection, Shams took Zobia to Aziz Bhatti hospital near Gujrat and told the hospital staff that Zobia had taken poisonous pills.

“He told me that she had swallowed poisonous pills because she was upset about a domestic dispute with her mother-in-law,” said Dr Asim Javed, adding “but a post mortem revealed she had been injected with poison. Moreover Shams’s mother passed away when he was young,” said Dr Asim Javed.

“My daughter was tortured and beaten before he gave her the injection. She told me that they had been fighting for over two months, ever since he said he wanted to take another wife,” Zobia’s mother Naghma Bibi told police officials. Naghma said that Zobia had threatened to leave Shams and that he had threatened to kill her.
“She was afraid for several days that he might do something drastic and this is why the children were staying with me,” she told police officials.

Shams had already been married when he married Zobia but his first wife could not bear children.

“His first wife, Lubna, agreed to live with her mother after Zobia’s children were born and as there were far too many arguments between the two women,” Naghma said. “They didn’t get divorced but she no longer lives here,” she said.

Police officials have registered a case on an application submitted by Zobia’s mother and have arrested Shams. “We found him trying to escape from his house. His bags were packed,” Chattha said, adding that on inquiry the accused had admitted to poisoning his wife. “He initially denied all claims of having poisoned her and said that she had tried to commit suicide and had been threatening to kill herself if he married for a third time,” Chattha said.

Shams told police that he had a religious right to take another wife and that his wife had reacted to his intentions and committed suicide. “After we provided the post mortem report and discovered the poison he had used in the injection he admitted to committing the murder,” police officials said.

Police officials have verified that Zobia’s body did bear marks of torture. Gujrat police have taken Shams into custody and are investigating the incident.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2010.