PESHAWAR: Peshawar High Court has rejected bail plea of a person charged with killing of his wife and portraying it as suicide in Shangla district over a month ago.

A single-member bench consisting of Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan observed that on tentative assessment of the available record, petitioner Aslam Khan was prima facie connected with the commission of the offence.

The bench observed that the offence also fell within the prohibitory clause of section 497 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and as such the petitioner was not entitled to the concession of bail.

The FIR of the occurrence was registered at Karora police station in Shangla district on June 29 under sections 302, 201, 202, 203 of the Pakistan Penal Code and section 15 of Arms Act.

FIR of case was registered in Shangla district on June 29

The complainant in the FIR was ASI Qaribullah, who stated that he received information from the petitioner, Aslam Khan, that his wife Salma committed suicide and her body was lying in his house.

He stated that pursuant to the information, he along with other police officials reached the spot and found the body lying in a pool of blood.

The body was sent for autopsy and the report provided that the deceased had not committed suicide as one of the bullets hit her left shoulder from behind, which was not possible in a suicide.

In the light of medical report and other information collected by the police, the petitioner was charged for the murder of his wife.

Police claimed that the motive of the murder was strained relations of the couple. They alleged that the petitioner was not of good character due to which he was often reprimanded by the deceased.

The petitioner’s counsel contended that his client was falsely implicated in the case and there was no eyewitness to the occurrence.

He stated that the petitioner was present in the market at the time of occurrence when he received information about his wife committing suicide.

The bench observed that as per contents of the FIR, the petitioner claimed that his wife committed suicide but that claim was falsify by the medico-legal report.

The bench observed that the record revealed that in post events of the occurrence, the petitioner was not around anywhere including at the time of shifting of his inured wife to the hospital for treatment and then in receiving the body from the hospital or identifying the body before the doctor and also to attend her funeral ceremony.

It was added that such unnatural conduct on the part of petitioner in the case of unnatural death of the deceased made him disentitled for the grant of bail.

Earlier, bail petition of the petitioner was also turned down by an additional district and sessions judge in Shangla with the observation that a valuable human life was lost while the version presented by the petitioner shrouded in mystery, showing that he had somewhat link with the commission of the offence.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2022