Heinous crime: Man sets wife on fire ‘for leaving the house’

The couple's inability to have children resulted in Bibi suffering repeated domestic abuse, says her brother

MULTAN:

A man and his father were arrested after they set the son’s wife alight for leaving the house without asking his permission, police said on Sunday.

Muhammad Siddique became enraged on learning that his wife, Shabana Bibi, 25, had visited her sister without first asking him if she could go out, her brother Muhammad Azam said.

Siddique and his father then beat Bibi before dousing her with petrol and setting her on fire in Muzaffargarh district on Friday, Azam said.

Bibi had been married to Siddique for three years. Her brother said she had suffered repeated domestic abuse for the couple’s inability to have children.



Bibi died of her injuries in hospital on Saturday. Doctors said she had come in with 80 per cent burns.

“We have arrested the husband and father-in-law of the deceased woman and charged them for murder and terrorism,” district police chief Rai Zameerul Haq said.

He said the case would be investigated and men would be tried on merit. He said the would be presented before a magistrate as soon as possible.

The charge of “terrorism” is regularly applied in such cases so as to expedite the legal process.

The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women, says more than 3,000 women have been killed in such attacks since 2008.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2015.