A murder scene, which was attempted to be a suicide

His loved ones, relatives and friends often complain about the SHO because every moment of his life is occupied with work. Sometimes it happens that you have taken half a day’s leave from the officer above and are preparing your travel bags and preparing to leave when suddenly there is a report of an incident in which your police station Reaching out becomes inevitable.

A similar incident happened to me as an SHO, when I was preparing to go to my native Pakpattan Sharif after taking a day off after Eid when I received a message from the control over the wireless that Ada 17 was in someone’s hands. A woman has committed suicide in a colony on Multan Road, so immediately send an officer from the police station to the spot.

I immediately sent Nazir Gujjar Sub-Inspector to the spot to hand over the dead body to the heirs after conducting the post-mortem and completing the necessary legal requirements under Section 174 of the Penal Code.

Suicide is such a tragedy that you as a police officer cannot do anything to prevent or remedy it, but as a police officer it is your legal and moral duty to look into the motivations and thoroughly investigate the circumstances. Check so that no ambiguity remains.

After the incident was reported, an endless series of phone calls began. These suggestive phone calls were related to the same suicide incident. The emphasis of all the callers was that the police should hand over the dead body to the next of kin as soon as possible so that the deceased can be buried in time.

However, in cases of suicide, the police usually completes the normal procedure and hand over the body to the next of kin, but the unusual pressure on the police to hand over the body to the next of kin at the earliest was making the whole situation suspicious.

A couple of gentlemen were adamant that an external autopsy should be done and the dead body should be handed over to the heirs because her family does not want the woman’s post-mortem to be done and the dead body to be desecrated.

My sixth sense was telling me that this is not an ordinary case of suicide and the urgent request of the heirs is not without reason.

So I postponed my intention to go on leave and decided to reach the occasion myself.

Ada 17 was barely 20 minutes away from a police station. Nazir Gujjar Sub-Inspector and a lady constable had reached the spot, I gave them a wireless message to stay there and not to send the body for post-mortem until I arrived.

I reached the spot and examined the whole situation and tried to know the details by questioning the local people.

According to preliminary information, 38-year-old Abida Parveen was the second wife of Amjad Khan Haral, 51 years old. Amjad Khan Haral was a merchant by profession and belonged to the middle class. He married Abida Parveen for the second time after the death of his first wife five years ago.

This was also the second marriage of deceased Abida Parveen with Amjad Khan Haral. Abida Parveen was first married in Lahore at the age of 28 to her cousin, who divorced Abida Parveen after five years due to childlessness.

Deceased Abida Parveen’s parents had died, so she started living with her brother in Khanewal after the divorce, but there was always a conflict between Nand and her sister-in-law, and the sister-in-law forced her brother after a year to see any relationship. Dispatch him from here. So the brother put the responsibility of his friends to find a suitable relationship for Abida, but being divorced and barren, there were many difficulties in finding a suitable relationship.

Abida was also fed up with the daily routine and wanted to leave here. Finally, Abida’s relationship with Amjad Khan was settled.

Amjad Khan Haral had two sons and a daughter from his first wife. The daughter was married, the younger son was an eighth grade student in a boarding school, while the elder son Arshad Haral was a 22-23-year-old youth and lived at home after dropping out in the ninth grade due to his wandering nature.

Abida Parveen’s father also owned agricultural land and had three or four shops in the city. After her father’s death, instead of sharing the agricultural land with her siblings, Abida got two shops in her name in the city.

In the beginning, the time was very good between the two husband and wife, but after two years of marriage, quarrels started in the house.

Amjad Haral’s son Arshad often used to usurp the rent from the two shops himself and when asked by Abida, he threatened her that silence was better for her and if she opened her mouth it would not be good.

Amjad Haral would often beat Abida at the request of his elder son. Most of the local people had confirmed the daily torture and ill-treatment of Abida.

According to husband Amjad Haral, deceased Abida Parveen wanted to die for sightseeing two days after Eid, but because of Amjad’s refusal, she became impatient at night and ended her life by consuming a large number of sleeping pills.

At the scene of the crime, an empty address of ‘Valium’ sleeping pills was also found under the pillow of deceased Abida Parveen.

The statements of Amjad Khan Haral and his son Arshad seemed suspicious to me. I felt that these two were trying to cover up something.

The lady constable told me that on physical examination she had seen marks of violence on the neck and one side of the face of the deceased.

Abida’s family was also unaware of the actual situation. There were two reasons for this, one is that Amjad Haral did not allow Abida to come anywhere, nor did he have any contact with her relatives.

The second reason was Abida Parveen herself. She knew that this was her second marriage. She didn’t want to hear the taunt of being divorced a second time, so she was silently bearing the persecution.

I ordered the sub-inspector to immediately prepare the post-mortem papers and ordered Amjad Haral and his son Arshad Haral not to go out of the city without my permission. I also obliged Abida Parveen’s brother to stay in Multan for the next two to four days.

I had also conveyed my concern to the in-charge of Accident and Medical Department of Nishtar Hospital (with whom I had a friendly meeting) and requested them to pay special attention to this case.

After deputing sub-inspector Nazir Gujjar to Nishtar Hospital for post-mortem, I returned to the police station. Outside the gate of the police station, a burqa-clad woman stopped my official vehicle with a hand signal. As soon as the car stopped, the woman said, ‘Ji Vade Thanidar Sahib, I will meet you.’

The woman was very nervous. I asked the sentry standing at the gate to bring the lady to my room. The lady told me that she wanted to give me very important information regarding Abida Parveen but her name should not be mentioned.

Seeing the panic of the lady, I reassured her that she should not worry and tell the whole thing in detail, her name will remain a secret and no letters will appear on her.

The woman said that ‘I am Abida Parveen’s friend. She was a woman of great courage and courage. She cannot commit suicide, she has been killed by these tyrants.’

The woman also said that the deceased Abida Parveen’s stepson Arshad and her husband Amjad Haral used to torture her frequently to get her shops named after them. One day he secretly kept the ownership papers of the shops with me because he was afraid that these two father and son would take these papers away from him. At the same time, he placed some papers wrapped in a shopper in front of me.

I thanked the woman for this information and reassured her that ‘don’t worry, God willing, I am looking into this case myself. If this murder is proved, the accused will be behind the bars very soon.’

After some time my mobile rang. The phone belonged to the doctor in charge of the accident department. He said that according to the preliminary results, the deceased Abida Parveen died due to suffocation, and the samples have been sent to the chemical examiner to check the presence of any suspicious chemicals or toxic substances in the stomach.

I immediately summoned both the father and son to the police station through sub-inspector Nazir Gujjar and started investigating them.

I explained to him that ‘in the post-mortem it has been proved that Abida Parveen’s death was not due to sleeping pills but due to asphyxiation, now your improvement is that the accident happened automatically. Give all the details, or prepare for your end.’

The post-mortem report had already exposed his lies. Finally, after a little struggle, both father and son started to speak the truth.

Amjad Haral said that on the wish of his son Arshad Haral, he wanted to name the two shops of his wife Abida in the name of his son, but Abida hid the ownership papers of the shops instead of handing them over to me.

He said: ‘Last night there was quite a fight between my son Arshad and my wife Abida regarding the handing over of these papers. My wife Abida slapped my son’s face, on which my son became agitated and stopped her breathing by putting a pillow on Abida’s mouth.

‘I tried to prevent my son from doing this, but by the time I removed the pillow, Abida was already dead. We put an empty pack of hypnotic pills under her pillow to make it look like suicide and called Police Control 15 and told her that Abida Parveen had committed suicide.’

I called the brother of the deceased Abida Parveen and called him to the police station and informed him of all the circumstances and incidents and filed an FIR of 302 murder against him and the property documents related to the shops of the deceased (which his friend were given to me) handed over to Abida Parveen’s brother.

I arrested both father and son under section 302 and sent them to jail.

A later chemical examiner’s report also confirmed that there was no evidence of the presence of any narcotic or toxic substance in the contents found in the victim’s stomach.

In this way, the two brutal accused, who killed an innocent person for the mere lure of two shops, failed to escape the grip of the law despite being very clever and cunning.