November 24, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 28, 1424

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MULTAN, Nov 23: The Khanewal district and session judge has ordered exhumation of the body of Afsheen Mussarrat, who died under mysterious circumstances a few days ago at her father’s house in Multan.

The judge reportedly passed the orders on the report of Multan’s Gulgashat police that the circumstances of Afsheen’s death warranted exhumation of her body. The judge has directed judicial magistrate Sikandar Bokhari to conduct exhumation under his supervision.

Afsheen died on Nov 10 last at her father Advocate Mussarrat Husain’s house in Gulshan-i-Mehar Colony. Her family buried her the next day in their ancestral village Marri Sahu in Kabirwala tehsil of Khanewal district, some 50 kilometres from here.

However, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s Multan Task Force coordinator Advocate Rashid Rehman filed an application with the Gulgashat police station to draw the attention of the law enforcers towards mysterious circumstances that led to death of Afsheen and feared that she might have been killed for the sake of honour.

A graduate in computer sciences from the Bahauddin Zakariya University, Afsheen belonged to the influential Sahu family of Kabirwala. She was married to her paternal cousin Nauman, a Pakistan Air Force officer, on Sept 12 last against her will. She reportedly wanted to marry her maternal cousin Hassan Mustafa, who was also her class fellow at the university.

The Sahu family is said to be divided into two political groups in the area, one supports the Hirajs of Chauki Mohan while the other backs the Shahs of Kattalpur. Afsheen’s family belonged to the former group while Hassan’s to the latter. Due to the political strife, Hassan’s proposal for Asheen was rejected by her family.

Afsheen, however, refused to live with her husband Nauman only a few days after their marriage and started living with her parents. When her family started pressing her to go back to her husband, she reportedly left her parent’s house on Nov 1 and went to Rawalpindi along with Hassan and sought refuge with a relative who was said to be a colonel in the Pakistan Army.

According to an HRCP report, Col Alamgir told the commission, in a conversation after her death, that he provided them (Afsheen and Hassan) shelter and took leave from his institution and came to Kabirwala to convince her family to accept her will. He said later on her father Mussarrat and some other relatives came to his place in Rawalpindi and demanded her possession.

The colonel told the commission that at this he handed over Afsheen to a colleague, Col Khalid Sahu, a close relative of Mussarrat Sahu, with an assurance that no harm would be done to her and that the matter would be resolved according to her will. Mussarrat Sahu and others brought Afsheen back in Multan on Nov 8 last. Two days after she died.

Under the circumstances, Afsheen’s sudden death gave birth to suspicions that she might have been killed. The suspicions further grew stronger when her family kept on changing statements on the cause of her death. They told the people that she died of a cardiac arrest. But again they said she died of an electric shock. Recently they said she died of some respiratory disease.

Response of the Multan police to the application of Rashid Rehman was rather lukewarm. District police officer Hamid Mukhtar Gondal even told an HRCP delegation that under the Qisas and Diyat laws the police could not take action against her heirs.

In response to the situation, noted rights activist Asma Jehangir wrote a letter to the Punjab chief minister and sought his help, alleging that the Multan police were under the influence of a state minister belonging to Khanewal district. Response from the CM was still awaited when reportedly a senior journalist of Lahore brought the matter to the knowledge of President Pervez Musharraf during the latter’s meeting with journalists the other day in the federal capital.

The president condemned honour killing through a statement and ordered an inquiry into the matter. Since then, the Multan police have taken up the matter actively.

When talked, rights activist Rashid Rehman said it was ironical that police needed a ‘presidential order’ to take note of crime against women. He reminded that the police had showed activism in the notorious ‘Mukhtaran Mai gang-rape case’ only when it was noticed in the higher echolen of the government.

Exhumation of the body of Afsheen Mussarrat is likely to be carried out on Monday (today).