SHIKARPUR: An HIV positive woman was strangled by her husband and her body was hanged from a tree in Gharo Rind village in the Dakhan area on Wednesday.

After receiving this information from relatives of deceased Kareema Rind, 30 and mother of five children, the Dakhan police took the body into custody and shifted it to hospital. Later, the body was handed over to relatives after its post-mortem examination at Garhi Yasin Taluka Hospital.

The police registered an FIR against Bahadur Rind, the husband of the deceased, his brother Darya Khan Rind and relative Johar Rind on the complaint of Akbar Rind, brother of Ms Kareema.

Nearly 700 people, many of them children, have tested positive in recent weeks

Bahadur was arrested but the two other suspects fled the village along with their families.

According to preliminary investigation, Ms Kareema was declared HIV positive recently after her blood screening. Her husband decided to marry another woman but Kareema raised objection.

“This morning the husband strangled [her] with a rope and then hung her from a tree outside his home,” Roshan Ali, a police officer in Shikarpur, told AFP.

According to a local police officer, her husband accused Ms Kareema of having an extramarital affair.

Further investigation is under way.

Gharo Rind Village is located near Ratodero in Larkana district, the epicentre of the HIV outbreak where thousands of people have been screened in the last month and hundreds have tested positive for the virus in recent weeks, adds AFP.

Anger and fear continue to swell in the desperately poor villages and suburbs near Larkana affected by the epidemic, which authorities say could be linked to either gross negligence or malicious intent by a local doctor using tainted syringes.

In rural Sindh — long bridled by harsh poverty and illiteracy — access to information about HIV and other diseases has kept the large swathes of the population in the dark about how the virus is transmitted.

Health officials say nearly 700 people, many of them children, have tested positive for the virus in recent weeks as experts warn of a surge in infection rate across Pakistan due to the use of unsanitary equipment and rampant malpractice — often at the hands of quack doctors.

Pakistan was long considered a low prevalence country for HIV, but the disease is expanding at an alarming rate — particularly among intravenous drug users and sex workers.

With about 20,000 new HIV infections reported in 2017 alone, Pakistan currently has the second fastest growing HIV rate across Asia, according to the United Nations.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2019