GUJRANWALA, July 30: A woman was sentenced to death on two counts by the Gujranwala additional district and sessions court judge on Wednesday for killing a seven-year-old girl after kidnapping her in 2005.

Convict Khalida Bibi was also sentenced to seven years imprisonment for hiding the evidence and a Rs10,000 fine besides a Rs100,000 compensation which she would pay to the victim family.

The husband of Khalida Bibi, Bashir, and his brother, were declared absconders in the case. The court acquitted four others of charges because of lack of evidence against them.

On April 10, 2005, Khalida kidnapped Samra, the daughter of her neighbor Ghulam Mustafa, with the help of Zohra Bibi, sister-in-law of Mustafa. She took the girl to Abbotabad where she forced her to drink shampoo. When Samra fell ill, she called a quack, Agha Khan, who treated the girl but could not save her.

Khalida buried the girl in the graveyard of Cantabad and returned to Gujranwala on April 13.

The motive behind the kidnapping and killing Samra was that Khalida and Zohra wanted to implicate their neighbour Robina Bibi, with whom Zohra had an old enmity.

After a day or two, eight-year-old Ali Ahmed, son of Murtaza who is brother of Mustafa, came to Khalida's house to watch television. Seeing the little boy in her house, Khalida planned to kill Ali to settle her score with a doctor.

She killed Ali without any hesitation and fear. Then she threw acid on the body to make it unrecognisable. Later, she exploded a firecracker on the body and burnt it. Then she started wailing and crying, telling every one that Dr Imran, of Mian Sansi Road, had came to his house and threw a bomb on her son. Police came at her house to look into the matter. When police interrogated her, it turned out that the deceased child was not hers but the son of Murtaza.

Police arrested her and during interrogation she disclosed that she had also killed Samra. On April 15, 2005, police exhumed the grave of Samra on the indication of Khalida. Khalida was sentenced to death for killing Ali last year. But Murtaza, the father of the deceased boy, reached an out-of-court deal with Khalida and let her off. After the deal, she was acquitted of the case but she could not be freed for the murder of Samra.Zohra, sister-in-law of Mustafa, who had helped Khalida kidnap Samra could not be tried because Mustafa had pardoned her.

During the trial, Mustafa nominated Shahid, Muhammad Arshad, Khalid Pervaiz and Robina Bibi as accomplices of Khalida in kidnapping and killing of Samra. The court, however, declared them innocent for absence of evidence against them. —IS