LAHORE, March 10: Seven people, including two women and three children, were stabbed and killed in Chuhng on Sunday.
The bodies of five members of a family and a paying guest were found in their house in Manawal village while that of the seventh person was found in a deserted plot in Mustafabad Town, Hanjarwal, some three kilometres from the house.
The dead were identified as Kaneez Fatima, 50, her four children —- Tahira Naheed, 20, Tahir Mahmood, 14, Kashif, 11, and Humaira, 8 —- and paying guest Muhammad Ali, 75. The body found in the plot was that of 25-year-old Tariq’s, the eldest son of Kaneez Fatima.
Asif, 17, the only survivor of the family, was missing. Driver by profession, he remained most of the time at work.
The blood-soaked bodies of Kaneez Fatima and Muhammad Ali were lying in one room while the other four were found in an adjacent room. Tahira Naheed had two stab wounds while the rest of the killed people had one stab wound each around their necks.
The books of the children were soaked also in blood and sweets and soft drinks were found near the bodies. These were sent for a chemical examination to ascertain whether the victims were drugged before being murdered. The bodies were sent to the city mortuary for autopsy.
Kaneez, a widow, and her family lived in the area for 10 years. They moved to this house two years ago.
Nasrullah, a neighbour, told Dawn that Kaneez married her son Tariq to Sana some two years ago. Their relations turned sour soon. Sana was living with her family nowadays.
On Saturday evening, he said that Sana’s father came to Tariq at a local bus stand at Multan Chungi. He took Tariq and his brother Asif along with him. Later in the evening, he said, Sana’s father was seen going to the house of Tariq along with another man.
On Sunday at 8am, he said, a milkman found a lock outside the house of Kaneez. He said the next door neighbour on suspicion trespassed on the house and found the bodies.
Nasrullah said that Kaneez had also received a phone call at her neighbour’s house on Saturday from Asif that he was going to DI Khan.
Another neighbour, Bashiran, said that Kaneez told her that her husband had an old enmity back in his native Bahawalpur. She said that two of Kaneez’s brothers-in-law were in jail.
Quoting Kaneez, she said: “We have left our native town just to escape rivals.” Kaneez and her daughter Tahira were schoolteachers.
Muhammad Ali who lived with the family for two years supplied milk to them. His only son had left him eight years ago.
The killer(s) had also ransacked the room. Locks of some boxes were also broken. However, electronic equipment, a TV set and a VCR were not taken away.
The investigation officer said they had found a gold ring from the spot and claimed that initial findings suggested that robbery was not a motive behind the killings. He said that no resistance marks were found on the bodies. He said they also found a knife, but he claimed it was not a murder weapon.
Nasrullah said that Kaneez had also received a phone call at her neighbour’s house on Saturday from Asif that he was going to DI Khan.
Meanwhile, police have registered a case against unidentified men on the complaint of the Chuhng police SHO and claimed to have conducted raids for the arrest of some suspects.
