PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday issued a stay order against the exhumation of the body of a woman, who had allegedly committed suicide.

While fixing Nov 30 for the next hearing into the case, Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel of the single-member bench directed the Badbher police to produce the relevant record.

The stay order was issued on a petition of Badbher resident, Yar Mohammad Khan, who had requested the court to quash the orders of the subordinate courts for the exhumation of the body of his daughter, Parkha Bibi, for autopsy.

Mohammad Atlsas Khan, lawyer for the petitioner, said the woman in question, 21, had committed suicide on Oct 23 due to a personal tragedy.

He said the deceased was in love with one of her neighbours but he married another woman prompting her to end her life.

The lawyer said the petitioner took his daughter to a nearby doctor after she took poisonous pills but the doctors declared her dead.

He said the local police later began inquiry into the incident and approached a judicial magistrate for exhumation of the body.

The lawyer said at the request of the police, a judicial magistrate ordered the exhumation of the body and asked the district health officer and head of the forensic science department of Khyber Medical College to autopsy the body.

He said as the petitioner was a respectable citizen, the order for the body’s exhumation should be set aside as it would bring a bad name to the family.

The lawyer said in the case, no complaint was filed with the police to doubt the woman committing suicide and that the police had acted on its own.

Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2015