KARACHI: A medical board that performed a second post-mortem examination of the body of a teenage maid on Tuesday rejected an earlier finding about her suicide and concluded that she was strangled.

The 17-year-old domestic help was found dead inside her employer’s house in the Defence Housing Authority’s Phase V on Sept 16. Initially, the Gizri police treated it as suicide since a medico-legal officer (MLO) of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre after an autopsy declared it so.

However, the victim’s family refused to believe that she committed suicide and they held protest demonstrations against police prompting the authorities to order a second post-mortem examination.

On Tuesday, the body was brought from a morgue to the Civil Hospital, where a four-member medial board comprising Prof Dr Farhat Mirza, Police Surgeon Aijaz Ahmed Khokhar, MLOs Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi and Dr Summayya Syed performed the post-mortem examination.

Police say the victim’s employers got pre-arrest bail

“The girl was strangled to death ... besides there are marks of torture on the body,” said Dr Abbasi, an additional police surgeon who is also one of the members of the board. “Some soft and flexible object was used in strangulation.”

About the allegation levelled by the family that the victim was sexually assaulted, Dr Abbasi said they had sent samples for a chemical analysis to confirm whether she was raped.

The report of the medical board obtained by Dawn stated that based on the findings of the fresh autopsy “the examining forensic board is of the unanimous opinion that the death occurred due to constriction of neck by ligature strangulation leading to cardio respiratory arrest and subsequent death”.

It went on to read: “The cause of death given in the post-mortem on Sept 17 conducted at the JPMC is hereby declared as null and void.”

About the earlier autopsy, Dr Abbasi said it appeared that the MLO at the JPMC had not conducted the post-mortem examination properly.

DIG South Azad Khan told Dawn that the police were initially treating it as suicide because of the doctor’s opinion.

It was because of this reason that the board re-examined the body and “nullified” the earlier cause of death given by the JPMC doctor, he added.

After the police and MLO ruled it a suicide case, the victim’s family and other relatives took the coffin to the Gizri police station on Saturday night and staged a protest sit-in there.

On Sunday, they held another protest rally outside the Karachi Press Club and demanded a fresh autopsy and registration of a murder case against her employers.

Their protest finally forced the authorities to order registration of the murder case against the girl’s employers — husband and wife.

The FIR was lodged under Sections 302 (premeditated murder), 376 (punishment of rape) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s mother.

The police also wrote a letter to the police surgeon, who referred the same to the Sindh health secretary on whose orders the medical board was constituted.

Till late on Tuesday night, no arrest was made and police said that the girl’s employers had already got pre-arrest interim bail.

Published in Dawn, September 20th, 2017