GUJRAT: Samia Shahid — a British citizen of Pakistani origin suspected of being a victim of honour killing — did not die of natural causes, according to a forensic report.

Nabeela Ghazanfar, a spokesperson for Punjab’s inspector general of police, confirmed on Wednesday that the forensic report had described Ms Shahid’s death as unnatural as she had been “asphyxiated”.

The spokesperson said the police inquiry team had carried out polygraph (lie-detector) tests on three main suspects. The reports of the tests had been attached to the forensic report, she added.

In the post-mortem report, Dr Sana of the district headquarters hospital, Jhelum, had mentioned that there was a bruise mark on the neck of the deceased and a blood-stained froth was oozing from her mouth, which heightened suspicions that she might have been murdered.

Ms Shahid, who worked as a beauty therapist in Bradford, was previously married to her cousin Chaudhry Shakil, but she got a divorce and later married Syed Mukhtar Kazim of Taxila. The couple settled in Dubai.

Ms Shahid was asked by her mother to visit her ailing father, Chaudhry Shahid, in their native village of Pandoori, near Mangla in Jhelum district, where she arrived on July 14.

But on July 20 her father reported to the police that she had died of a heart attack. On July 23, her second husband filed a murder case with the Mangla police against five people — her parents, her former husband, her sister and her cousin.

Later Ms Shahid’s father changed his statement and claimed that she had committed suicide.

Sources said that police had already detained the main suspects in the case — Chaudhry Shahid, Chaudhry Shakil and Ms Shahid’s cousin Chaudhry Mobeen.

The remaining two nominated suspects, her mother Imtiaz Bibi and her sister Madeeha Shahid, are said to be in England and are yet to be interrogated.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2016