LAYYAH: One of the nominated suspects in murder case of 24-year-old woman confessed during police investigation to killing her after rape.

The body of ‘M’, a resident of Chah Luqmanwala, Mauza Nawankot, was found hanging from a tree on Thursday.

The preliminary postmortem report confirmed she was raped and then strangled to death. Her body was found hanging from a tree to create an impression she committed suicide.

On the report of deceased’s father, Allah Ditta, Chaubara police had registered a case and apprehended Saqib Ali, 26, a mason and his two friends Irfan and Zaman, a labourer.

SHO Yousuf Khan, maintained that during investigation the prime suspect in FIR, Saqib Ali, confessed that he murdered M.

According to the SHO, the victim visited Saqib’s residence on Wednesday night to meet him. However, when her family came to know about her absence and she expressed apprehension she might be killed for honour, the suspect got panicked and to conceal the relationship strangled her to death.

Saqib’s accomplice Zaman, in his statement said he took M to Saqib’s residence on his motorcycle on Wednesday night.

“Investigation is under way and nothing definite could be said before the police received chemical examination report of the body,” the SHO said.

The woman's boyfriend, Saqib, in his confessional statement said he tried to force M, daughter of the blind parents, to develop relations with his two friends too, but she refused, AFP added quoting police investigators.

“The incident occurred on Thursday night and was reported to the police on Friday when the local people saw a woman’s body hung from a tree,” senior police official Ghazi Salahudin told AFP.

He said the woman was raped and strangled to death, and then her body was hanged to make it look like a suicide.

“But the branch was so low and the body was touching the ground in a sitting position,” the officer said.

The woman was the eldest of eight siblings and made a living by farming a small piece of land.

The incident has disturbing similarities to an attack in India last month, in which two teenage girls were found gang-raped and hanged from a mango tree in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Police said Saqib had met the woman after he visited her house in his role as an assistant at a vegetable wholesale shop.

A day before the murder, police said, Saqib had brought the woman for a date in the shop where he worked. He took her to the roof, where two of his friends were waiting.

When Saqib tried to persuade the woman to develop relations with all three of them, she resisted, according to police. She was then allegedly raped and killed. Police said they were still investigating if the woman had been raped by the other men as well, the agency added.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2014