Falling friends: Police get 3-day remand in Abeera murder case

LAHORE:

A sessions court on Sunday handed over three people suspected of killing Lahore-based model Abeera to police on a three-day remand.

Police had sought a seven-day remand of Tooba alias Izma Rao, Farooqur Rehman and Zeeshan Naveed. Duty Magistrate Bushra Anwer asked Tooba whether she wanted to be medically examined to establish police torture. The accused, holding her three-year-old daughter, declined the offer.

She told the court that she had killed the deceased for refusing to help her kill Babar Javed Butt, her former husband. Rehman and Naveed pleaded not guilty. They said the case was not being investigated in an impartial manner. Rehman and Naveed said Tooba wanted to falsely implicate them.

Police said she had confessed to killing the deceased in a statement recorded by the department. Officials said she had sourced the poison from Zeeshan Naveed, a hakeem. Police said Tooba had mixed the poison in juice and given it to Abeera to consume, according to the statement. Officials said she had contacted Rehman and Naveed, her friends, after the deceased consumed the beverage and lost consciousness. Officials said she had initially decided to dump the body in a canal after speaking to Rehman and Naveed. Police said she had decided to take the body to a bus terminal as she wanted to send the body to the house of the deceased in Sialkot.

“My former husband killed our two-month-old daughter,” Tooba told journalists outside the court. She said a complaint had not been registered in this regard as her former brother-in-law was a police official. Tooba said she wanted a case to be registered against him.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 2^nd, 2015.