MITHI: The prime suspect in the murder case of a Pakistan Peoples Party activist who was arrested in a raid on a village near Dhoro Naro with the help of CCTV camera footage has confessed to have committed the crime “in the name of honour”.

Seeta Ram, who was produced by police before reporters at a press conference here on Friday, said that he had shot dead Chandar Sharma, information secretary of PPP Tharparkar chapter and personal secretary to PPP MNA Dr Mahesh Kumar Malani, because he had been maintaining “extramarital relations” with his wife for many months.

“I intended to kill my wife, who works as a lady health worker, and her mother as well after having killed Sharma but I could not bring myself to shed further blood,” he said.

He said that he was certainly not happy about murdering a fellow human being but the man made him feel so lowly and miserable due to the alleged affair that he could not continue living like that. He would always threaten to implicate him in false cases if he objected to their “illicit relations”, he said.

Tharparkar SSP Imran Quraishi said the suspect had confessed to have committed the crime for ‘honour’. He said the suspect’s three-day police remand had been obtained for further investigation.

Sharma’s murder last Friday had sparked widespread protests in several areas of the province while most of the towns in the desert district observed shutdown for three days.

PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had demanded early arrest of the killer.

Dr Anil Kumar, younger brother of Sharma, had on July 21 registered an FIR against Seeta Ram under Section 302 of Pakistan Penal Code at Mithi police station but he failed to elaborate the motive behind the murder.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2018