MULTAN, Nov 24: A medical board conducted postmortem on the body of Afsheen Mussarrat after exhumation at Marri Sahu village in Khanewal district on Monday amid strict security.

Sources said late on Monday night that initial postmortem report revealed that Afsheen’s death was not natural.

It was learnt that the police have decided to register a case against some male members of Afsheen’s family.

The case will be registered on the basis of HRCP application, a senior official said.

The board was constituted on the orders of Khanewal district and sessions judge, while area judicial magistrate Sikandar Bokhari supervised the exhumation. Khanewal DPO Dr Jameel Ahmed was also present on the occasion along with a heavy police contingent.

No relative of Afsheen was ready to point out her grave and the officials had to seek help of a gravedigger. Zaibunisa, a women councillor of Kabirwala tehsil council, who reportedly performed corpse ghusal, identified the body after exhumation.

Two close relatives of Mussarrat Hussain Sahu, the father of Afsheen, were present at the time of exhumation and they reportedly protested against ‘desecration’ of the body. The medical board collected extracts of vital body parts and sent them to the chemical examiner. The board members, including Dr Afshan Abbas Shafqat, did not give any initial finding and put off their observations till the chemical examiner’s report.

Afsheen had died on Nov 10 at her father’s house in Gulshan-i-Mehar Colony of Multan. Her family buried her the next day at their ancestral Marri Sahu village in Kabirwala tehsil of Khanewal district, some 50 kilometres from here, declaring her death as natural.

Human Rights Commission Of Pakistan’s Multan Task Force coordinator Rashid Rahman filed an application with the Gulgashat police to draw attention of the law enforcers towards the death of Afsheen under mysterious circumstances and expressed fear that she might have been killed for the sake of honour.

A computer science graduate, Afsheen was married to her paternal cousin Nouman on Sept 12 last against her wishes because she wanted to marry her maternal cousin and class fellow Hassan Mustafa.

There were rumours that Afsheen and Hassan had solemnized nikah secretly before her forced marriage with Nouman. On Nov 1 last, Afsheen eloped with Hassan and took refuge in Rawalpindi with a family acquaintance. Her father and other male members of the family managed to brought her back on Nov 8 and two days later she was reported dead.

The Multan police initially did not give the matter much importance. According to an HRCP report, the police discouraged the rights activists to pursue the matter arguing that under the Qisas and Diyat laws action in such cases without the consent of heirs was not possible.

The police had to take up the matter last Saturday when President Gen Pervez Musharraf condemned atrocities against women and ordered a thorough inquiry into the ‘mysterious’ death of Afsheen.

Meanwhile, rights activist Rashid Rahman filed a petition with the Multan district and sessions judge on Saturday, seeking constitution of a medical board instead of referring the case to the Khanewal district and sessions judge because the place of crime fell under his jurisdiction in Multan district.

He also contended that a district judge could not refer a matter directly to the judge of another district without adopting the route of High Court.

Mr Rahman also feared that the influential people of Khanewal could exert pressure on the medical board because Afsheen’s family was said to be close to the District Nazim group. The judge dismissed the petition on the ground that another judge had already constituted the medical board for postmortem.