KARACHI Nov 28 (TNS): A judicial magistrate on Tuesday directed police to present suspects behind the murders of a young couple on the orders of a jirga before a monitoring judge of anti-terrorism court after relevant clauses of the anti-terrorism law were incorporated in the FIR.
The police presented nine suspects before a magisterial court in Karachi to seek their physical remand for questioning. It directed the police to produce them before a monitoring judge of anti-terrorism courts for their trial after insertion of terrorism charges in the case.
The young couple, 25-year-old Abdul Hadi and 22-year-old Haseena, who contracted a freewill marriage, was murdered on the night of Nov 22 in the city’s Mominabad area by the woman’s family members on the orders of a tribal jirga in the name of “honour killing.”
A day earlier, the police exhumed the bodies of the couple for autopsy, which confirmed that they were strangled to death and subsequently buried in an Ittehad Town graveyard.
The police on Tuesday incorporated the relevant clauses of the Anti-terrorism Act 1997 in the FIR registered at the Mominabad police station.
According to the FIR, Miskeen, the victim woman’s father, along with her brothers – Habib, Ayub, Azam and Mirza, murdered the young couple on Nov 22 for going against their wishes and contracting a freewill marriage on the orders of a tribal jirga and secretly buried the dead in Qaimkhani graveyard.
Of fifteen men nominated in the case, nine have been arrested, whereas the key suspect, the woman’s father, is still at large and said to have gone into hiding.
The held suspects included Abdullah, the father of male victim, Noor Mohammed, Mohammed Umer, Abdul Sattar, Mohammed Azeem, Ziaul Haq, Ghulam Rasool, Abdul Rasheed and Eidan.
