GILGIT, July 23: People in the Bilhunz village in the Ghizer district last week fished out the body from the Ishkomen River of a 45-year-old woman, who had gone missing four months ago.

Sources said the police had failed to find Daulat Begum, mother of four.

They said a villager, Hakim Baig, allegedly assaulted the deceased in November 2002 and a Jirga fined him Rs40,000 to be paid to the victim.

“The body was fished out on July 15 from the river but it seemed that it had been exhumed after having been buried for some months,” sources said.

Quoting Khaleem Baig, son of the deceased woman, the sources said the police had threatened to arrest the victim’s family members and villagers if a clue to her whereabouts was not found by July 17. “But the body was recovered before the deadline,” he said.

The village’s numbardar Roshan Ali Khan claimed that the woman had committed suicide.

However, sources said the cases of suicide by young women in the district were increasing.

Ghizer Press Club President Durdana Sher said that in 2002 seven women committed suicide but the number increased to 15 in the current year.

Circumstantial evidence indicated that most of them might have been murdered by their relatives, he said.

He said that in July, bodies of two women, Zeenat and Naheed, were fished out of the Ghizer River.

The relatives said they were insane though Naheed, a resident of Bubar, Puniyal, had a five-month-old daughter. She was married two years ago and Zeenat was married five months back.

The suicide cases were never investigated by police or human rights organizations, he said.