LAHORE, Dec 7: Eleven-day-old Serwar Ali, who was slaughtered allegedly by his mother, was buried on Thursday, leaving a question mark on a marriage of a mentally handicapped woman to his maternal cousin.

Tahira Bashir, 24, who had been mentally upset for the last seven years, allegedly slit open the throat of her first baby in the Misri Shah area on Thursday evening.

Tahira had tense relations with her husband Mumtaz Javed, a health inspector with the health department, for some time. For the past three months she had been living with her parents in Misri Shah, police investigators told Dawn.

The first information report quoted Mumtaz as saying: “Tahira has murdered my first child after 11 days of delivery for unknown reasons, at a time when I came to see my family. I saw Tahira and the slaughtered baby in my in-laws room.”

The accused, during her stay at Race Course Women’s Police Station, did not talk and looked shocked, the investigators said.

The parents of both Mumtaz and Tahira had agreed on the marriage despite Tahira had been admitted to Punjab Institute of Mental Health many a times. According to Bashir Ahmed, Tahira’s father, the doctors were optimistic about Tahira’s recovery.

Bashir said Tahira, his eldest daughter, had become the victim of mental disorder which was detected after her long lasting fever.

“Tahira recovered from the illness several times and at last we arranged her marriage with Mumtaz with an optimism that she would bring a change in her life,” he further said.

He added that out of his four daughters, Tahira had discontinued education during matriculation because of illness.

Illyas, a Bashir’s neighbour, said Tahira had been hospitalised five to six times before marriage but she had never hurt any one in the past.

The woman was arrested on Wednesday by police after the registration of a case on the complaint of her husband. She was sent to Kot Lakhpat jail on Thursday after her production before a judicial magistrate.