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| May 23, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1426 |
A question of suicide or honour killing?
ISLAMABAD, May 22: The tragic ending to the love marriage of Suraya Sohail and Hassan Jamal took a new turn on Saturday as the police and medico-legal investigations into the alleged suicide revealed new information. Suspecting foul play in the alleged suicide of Ms Suraya, doctors at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) sent the viscera samples of the 21-year-old for chemical and histopathological examination to rule out suspicions about poisoning and other causes of death.
The victim was a student of BA at Margalla College, while her ex-husband, Jamal, was jobless after completing his education from Islamic University.
Police said Jamal had disappeared and was untraceable till Saturday evening.
The autopsy conducted by Pims medico-legal officers, including Dr Aisha and Dr Waseem Khawaja, suggested that there might be other causes of death besides the suicide as claimed by the girl’s family which had shifted the body to Pims before the arrival of the police. The body was removed from the house of Suraya’s grandmother, where she returned after Jamal divorced her by succumbing to family pressures.
According to the family’s version given to the police, Suraya committed suicide by handing herself with a Dupatta tied to a ceiling fan.
Dr Khawaja told Dawn that Suraya had a 1.5cm strangulation mark on her neck, but the autopsy did not reveal if the death occurred due to blockage of air passage. An X-ray report is still awaited to confirm if the death occurred due to breaking of any of the cervical vertebra as it usually happens in such cases, the doctor said.
The sources said the chemical examiner had been asked to confirm the presence or absence of any poison in the viscera samples sent for laboratory analysis.
According to Margalla Police Station SHO Khan Khurshid Khan, Hassan Jamal and Suraya Sohail contracted a court marriage against the will of their families on May 9.
However, the boy’s father, Jamaluddin, a former employee of State Bank, kicked the newly weds out of his house and threatened to disinherit his son.
After getting married, the couple spent the first few days shifting places — from a guest house to a hotel and later at a relative’s residence.
Under intense family pressure, Jamal is said to have divorced his wife, barely nine days after marriage.
Suraya received a xerox of divorce papers through courier, and lodged a report with the police, stating that her husband had disappeared and the papers she received were fake, the SHO said.
The police called the parents and asked a reconciliation committee to resolve the issue. The committee asked the two families to come again on Saturday, however Suraya died on Friday.
The police are trying to trace the whereabouts of Jamal, who was last seen by Suraya when she returned to her grandmother’s house.
Another interesting aspect of the case came to the fore when Dr Sohail, father of the deceased girl, told the police that some unidentified person called on his mobile phone at about 10:30pm on Friday and informed him that his daughter had committed suicide. However, when he called back on the number, he came to know that the call had been made from a PCO.
The police said Suraya’s family had a troubled history as her parents got split two years ago due to domestic disputes. Her mother and three brothers are living in F-10/3, while she had been living with her grandmother in G-8/1 for the last four years.
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