LAYYAH: The body of a 24-year-old woman was found hanging from a tree in Nawankot area of Choubara tehsil on Friday.

The woman’s father told police his son alerted him in the small hours of the morning that his daughter was not in her bed. “When my son woke up he found his mobile phone missing from underneath his pillow. He also noticed that his sister was not in her bed.”

My son made a call from my phone to locate his mobile phone. It turned out that the phone was with my daughter. She replied that ‘I am near the cattle farm and on my way home’,” the woman’s father told reporters.

“But when she didn’t turn up for quite some time, we went to the cattle farm. She was not there. We repeatedly called on the mobile phone number, but it was switched off.

“At 6:30am a passer-by informed us that a young woman’s body was hanging from a tree almost two kilometres from my home. When we rushed to the place, a chilling sight awaited us. The body was that of my daughter, the grief-stricken man said.

An autopsy confirmed that she had been raped and then strangulated.

The mother told Dawn she suspected that a mason was behind the tragedy.

The man, who worked at an under-construction grain market, used to visit “our house to buy milk. I think my daughter eloped with him. She took about 70 grams of gold ornaments and Rs50,000 with her,” said the mother.

The SHO of the police station concerned claimed that his men had arrested the mason.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2014