LAHORE: The mystery surrounding the murder of a wanna-be model, Abeera, was resolved when, according to police, her friend Tooba confessed poisoning her to death after failing to convince her to kill the latter’s ex-husband.

At a press conference at Qila Gujjar Singh police station on Saturday, Senior Superintendent of Police Rana Ayaz Saleem told reporters that Uzma Rao alias Tooba, also a struggling model, confessed to have poisoned Abeera to death.

She served Abeera yogurt spiked with cyanide which she had bought from a Hakeem with the help of an accomplice, Farooq.

Read: CCTV footage leads to arrest of girl’s killer

The SSP said Tooba told police during interrogation that she had killed Abeera at her house in Model Town by poisoning her after she refused to kill her (Tooba’s) ex-husband Babar Javed Butt.

Tooba also revealed that she wanted to take revenge from her ex-husband for his cruelty and was plotting to kill him with Abeera’s help, who first agreed but later refused to do so, he added. Tooba held Butt responsible for the death of their two-month-old daughter.

The SSP said Tooba had a troubled childhood and was allegedly despised by her father since her birth for being a girl. She left her parents’ home when she was an FSc student.

Quoting Tooba, the SSP said that she also confessed to have poisoned a photojournalist, Yousuf Khokhar, by spiking his juice with cyanide at the Model Town Park, where his body was later found in November 2014.

She told the police that she killed Khokhar because he had provided ‘negatives’ of some of her pictures to Mr Butt because of which he divorced her.

The SSP said a forensic report confirmed that Abeera was poisoned to death and they were awaiting the forensic report of Yousuf. He said another arrested suspect, Farooq, helped Tooba get poison from his friend Zeeshan, a Hakeem.

He said it was found that Tooba had filed a rape complaint against Butt in 2010 with Ghalib Market police station. But fearing legal action and stigma Butt agreed to marry Tooba after which she did not press the charges.

He said Abeera wanted to become a model and she met Tooba on Dec 24, 2014, at a local hotel and sought her help for promotion as a model. Later, the both started living together at Tooba’s house, he added.

The SSP said that bottles of cyanide, ethanol and arsenic were recovered from the house of Tooba.

About psychological factors which might have pushed Tooba to that extreme, he told Dawn, “It seems to be death of her two-month old daughter, allegedly because of her ex-husband’s cruelty, which made her kill a photojournalist and then Abeera. In fact, she wanted to avenge the death of her own daughter,” said the SSP who himself interrogated Tooba along with Iqbal Town SP Ijaz Shafi Dogar.

The SSP said three people, including a woman, were taken into custody for allegedly helping Tooba in Abeera’s murder. The suspects were identified as Farooqur Rehman, a friend of Tooba and his friend Zeeshan, a Hakeem, who supplied cyanide, arsenic and ethanol to her, he said.

Tooba was identified by Abeera’s family through a CCTV footage of a bus stand where she left a suitcase containing Abeera’s body and had fled away.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2015

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