PESHAWAR, May 1: A woman victim of the inhuman custom of Swara is undergoing life term at Haripur central prison after being sentenced for killing her husband.

Gul Marjan, 22, is awaiting the fate of her appeal pending before the Peshawar High Court. The court has fixed June 4 for hearing her case.

The woman was nominated by her father-in-law, Eid Bacha, in the murder case of her husband, Zahir Shah. He claimed that she was given in Swara to his son, but their relations remained strained.

The appellant was handed over against her will to the rival party in 1997. A jirga in Banda Speenkai in Kohat had decided to hand her over in Swara to settle a dispute which had arisen due to illicit relations of her brother with a girl of the rival family.

The deceased Zahir Shah was killed on Dec 3, 1998. The FIR of the case was registered by the appellant herself. She told the police that she was in her room when her husband at midnight went out to toilet, and claimed that she heard a gun shot and saw her husband in injured outside the room.

One week after the occurrence her father-in-law charged her for the offence, stating that the brother of the woman, Wazir Badshah, had illicit relations with his daughter. He claimed that a local jirga decided to hand them Gul Marjan in Swara and also fined her brother Rs10,000. From the very beginning, he claimed, the relations between the couple were strained.

She was tried by the additional district and sessions judge and was convicted on the basis of her confessional statement. In her confessional statement she claimed that her husband used to torture and severely beat her on various pretexts. She claimed that on the night of occurrence he loaded a gun and aimed it at her.

Gul Marjan claimed that she tried to save herself and during the scuffle the gun went of resulting in the death of her husband.

Later, she retracted from the statement and claimed that she was forced by the police to record it.

The chairman of voice of prisoners, Advocate Noor Alam Khan, who is pleading her case, told Dawn that the unfortunate woman had to suffer twice. “First she had to pay the price for the misdeeds of her brother, and now she had been in prison since 1998,” he added.

The counsel claimed that it was a case with no evidence and even the weapon of offence was not recovered from the residence of the appellant.

He added that the confessional statement could not be relied upon as it was recorded under duress.