KARACHI: A judicial magistrate on Tuesday remanded a woman in police custody for three days for allegedly drowning her two-year-old daughter in the sea a day before.

The body of the child, Anam, was recovered on Tuesday morning near Farhan Shaheed Park in Defence Phase VIII.

The police claimed that the held mother, Shakeela Rashid, confessed to have thrown her daughter in the sea over some domestic problems.

Law enforcers claim woman committed the crime due to ‘domestic problems’

An official at the Sahil police station told Dawn that at around 3.30pm on Monday, police received information that a woman had thrown an infant girl in the sea near the Farhan Shaheed Park. The police rushed to the spot and took Ms Rashid into custody.

On Tuesday, at around 9.30am the body was fished out after some labourers spotted it.

Clifton SP Suhai Aziz said that the Sahil police arrested the mother and registered a murder case against her on behalf of the state.

Three-day police remand

On Tuesday, Investigating Officer Rizwan Akram produced her before JM (South) Makhdoom Faiq Hussain who was on special duty since Feb 5 is a public holiday.

The IO informed the court that the suspect needed to be interrogated to ascertain the motive that drove her to kill the minor child and as to whether she committed the alleged offence alone or in complicity with any other accomplice.

He mentioned in the remand paper that she was continuously changing her statements, thus it was necessary to further interrogate her to dig out the actual motive behind the murder.

The IO requested the court to grant him 14-day remand to complete the investigation and fulfil other legal formalities.

However, the magistrate granted three-day physical remand of the suspect directing the IO to produce her on the next date and submit the final investigation report.

Educated background

Police said that the woman, who had a business degree, had gotten married in 2012. Four years later, she gave birth to Anam but later on her husband told her that he could not keep “both of them at his home”, according to her initial statement to police.

She returned to her parents’ house in Golimar, but sometime later they also told her to go to her husband’s house.

“Sometimes I stayed at the home of my husband and sometimes at parents’ home by persuading them to allow me to stay for one night,” she told police. “I could not see any future of me and my daughter, I was living in a hell, therefore, I drowned my daughter,” Clifton SP Aziz said while quoting her statement.

“She appears to be a sound person but both her husband and father, who visited the police station on Tuesday, claimed that she was emotionally disturbed and has been getting treatment for the past five years,” she said.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2019