SAHIWAL, May 31: A mother of five children was allegedly strangled to death by her husband over a domestic dispute in Five Marla Scheme, Chak Badian, Pakpattan tehsil, on Saturday night.
As per reports, the victim, Shazia Bibi, 39, a resident of Mahtab Rai, Depalpur, was married to Shoukat, a farm labourer, 19 years back and the couple had five children.
Sources close to the family say that a daughter of the couple, Sonia (14), was working as a house help in Johar Town, Lahore, and Shazia also wanted to work there, while her husband insisted she should remain at Chak Badian with their children.
A couple of days ago, two male relatives of the couple came to their house and stayed there to convince Shoukat to move to Lahore, along with his family and work there, but he did not agree.
On Saturday night, while Shazia was asleep in the courtyard, the guests heard her screams and rushed to the courtyard, where they allegedly saw Shoukat strangling his wife with a scarf. Before they could intervene, Shoukat fled, leaving Shazia dead on the spot.
On being called, a team of Chak Badian police reached the village, conducted forensic examination of the crime scene and shifted the woman’s body to hospital for the postmortem examination.
Later, a murder case (No 596/26) was registered under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the victim’s father, Hanif.
‘FRAUDSTER’ BOOKED: Farid Town police, Sahiwal, have registered a case against a senior employee of a private housing society for allegedly defrauding some clients and depriving them of Rs13.75 million over the past two years.
As per the police, the fraud was unearthed during an internal audit conducted by the company behind the private housing scheme.
According to the police, the company had appointed Hazeema Siddiqi at the housing scheme office on Madhali Road on August 7, 2023 to handle bank statements, deposit clients’ cheques, withdrawing funds, and legally pursuing the bounced cheques.
The police investigations found that instead of depositing cheques into the company’s bank accounts, the suspect would allegedly divert the payments to his personal and some other bank accounts.
It was further revealed that the suspect would used the company’s money to purchase cryptocurrency and use clients’ accounts for transactions.
The investigators detected three bank accounts, opened in the names of Alishah Anwar (Okara), Malaika Bint-e-Abid and Saif Shoaib (Sahiwal), which were used to deposit the cheques issues in the company’s name.
The audit team also traced more than a dozen suspicious transactions and forged endorsements, and un-reconciled deposit records etc.
Despite being issued an explanation letter, Siddiqi did not cooperate with the audit team, prompting the company to lodge a complaint with the police.
The police registered a case against the suspect under sections 420 and 428 of the PPC on the compliant of Muhammad Iqbal.
Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026