Watta satta: Man and his brothers try to kill his wife

Parveen said that Kareem wanted to get rid of her now that his sister was a widow.

DERA GHAZI KHAN: A man and his three older brothers brutally tortured his wife over their watta satta marriage.

According to police officials, In Jampur village Kareem and his brothers tortured his wide Parveen by throwing kerosene oil on her after beating her with a poker. Parveen managed to escape and fainted outside the street of her house. “They came at me with a poker and Kareem threw oil on me. I knew they had been plotting to kill me for weeks,” Parveen told the police, while she was admitted at the local Tehsil headquarters hospital. Neighbours said that they had found Parveen in the street outside her house, “She was bleeding and was severely bruised. We immediately took her to the hospital,” Omar Qayyum told the police. Qayyum said that the villagers had heard several rumours about how the men of the family planned that Kareem should remarry. “We all assumed that they had been fighting because he wanted to take a second wife,” he said. Police officials said that Kareem and Parveen had been married in a watta satta marriage where, Kareem’s sister was married to Parveen’s brother Dr Ahsanul Rehman. “Rehman died last month in a car accident,” City Police station house officer Nazar Saeed said.

After the death of his brother in law, Kareem allegedly began to plot to kill his wife. Parveen said that she and Kareem had been pressured by the family elders into their marriage. “We were never happy and he always said that he would have left me if it weren’t for his sister,” she said, adding that Kareem had gotten his sister remarried just 10 days after the death of her husband, Rehman. Parveen is currently in the hospital with her mother and brother. The family have accused Kareem and his brothers of managing to silence the police. “I am positive they bribed the police not to register a case because they are influential members of this community,
her mother said. “The medical certificate stated that there were ‘minor signs’ of abuse, when the entire hospital could see that she was bruised and couldn’t see out of one eye. They had covered her with kerosene and were about to set her on fire before she escaped,” said Sadiqa Begum.  SHO Nazar said that even though this was a case of torture, the medical certificate was inconclusive and he needed to hear out both parties before registering a case. “We will obviously pursue the case but we cannot do so on the woman’s word alone. She could be suicidal and blaming it on her husband,” Nazar said. The deputy inspector general (DIG) has ordered that the resident police officer and district police officer immediately register a case.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2010.