KARACHI: Investigations into a newly married woman’s apparent ‘suicide’ on April 26 have brought the police to believe it may be a case of murder brought on by intimacy problems.

Nineteen-year-old Ruhi Bano was found dead in her mother’s house and the Khokhrapar police initially quoted her mother and husband as saying it was a suicide. She was said to have hung herself from the fan. DSP Nisar Ahmed Qaimkhani and SHO Khalid Nadeem Baig also quoted the family as saying that she had attempted suicide before her marriage to rickshaw driver Sajid Ali.

However, further investigations revealed that not only had Ruhi Bano approached a neighbourhood cleric with her problem but she had also written a letter to her family about her distress, which was of an intimate nature with her husband. The cleric told Ruhi Bano that if he was putting her through this problem her marriage stood dissolved.

After these findings came to light, her mother, Sarwari Begum, registered FIR No. 48/08 on Friday, May 2, nominating Sajid Ali, who was arrested Saturday. The woman who had performed the ghusl or final bath on the body said that it was swollen and there were bruises. The police are considering an exhumation.

The DSP and SHO defended their initial findings by saying that in the beginning the police always rely on statements.

Ruhi Bano’s mother Sarwari Begum told Daily Times that the marriage consultant had duped them. “She said that Sajid Ali was a bachelor but he was twice divorced.”

This much Ali admitted to in custody while talking to Daily Times. He claimed he divorced his first wife because she told him on their wedding night that she had fallen in love with someone else and he divorced his second wife because she aborted their child.
Source: Daily Times
Date:5/6/2008