LAHORE // A British-Pakistani woman whose husband alleges she was killed for marrying him against her parents’ wishes was murdered, Pakistani police said on Wednesday.
Samia Shahid, 28, a beautician from Bradford had been living in Dubai with Kazim Mukhtar, her second husband, for two years. She had gone to visit her family in Pakistan and died last month in the village of Pandori in northern Punjab.
Police spokeswoman Nabeela Ghazanfar said a forensic report on Shahid’s death had been released to a three-member investigative committee led by Abubakar Khuda Bakhsh, the deputy inspector general police.
“The report says that she neither committed suicide, nor did she die a natural death,” Mr Ghazanfar said. “She died of asphyxia after her breathing was choked, which leads to the possibility she was murdered. Now the team will carry out investigations along the lines that this is a murder.”
Shahid’s relatives said she had died of a heart attack, but Mr Mukhtar said last week that he believed she had been poisoned and then strangled.
No arrests have been made so far, but Shahid’s father and a cousin have been questioned by police.
Police are also searching for her divorced first husband, Choudhry Shakeel, who is missing.
Mr Mukhtar said the couple had received death threats from her family in the past. He also said her family was angered that Shahid converted from Sunni to Shia Islam after the couple married.
Some 500 women are killed each year in Pakistan by relatives who feel their family has been shamed by a daughter or sister fraternising with men, eloping or otherwise infringing conservative demands on women.
The case attracted attention because it came just days after the high-profile “honour killing” of outspoken social media star Qandeel Baloch, whose brother confessed to the crime and has been arrested.
Baloch’s murder who had divided opinion in the deeply conservative Muslim society by regularly posting risqué photos on social media, led the government to announce that it would pass long-delayed legislation outlawing honour killing within weeks.
* Reuter
