OKARA: Novelist Ali Akbar Natiq’s sister, who was a schoolteacher, was killed allegedly by her husband and his accomplice on Oct 25 at Chak 44/D in the Dipalpur police area.

The victim, Khadeeja, was a schoolteacher and mother of four.

The FIR was registered against the suspects, her husband Inamullah and his friend Munawwar Mughal, on Sunday, five days after the incident that also after a lot of hue and cry.

The case was registered on the complaint of Shamoon, another brother of Khadeeja and Natiq, a resident of Chak 32/2-L.

However, registering the FIR was not a plain sailing for Natiq and his family.

Talking to Dawn, Natiq alleged that his brother-in-law Inamullah had contacts with local politicians which he used to delay the registration of the case. He said the family had held a protest against the station house officer (SHO) in front of the office of the district police officer (DPO) on Oct 26 but nobody paid attention to them.

Novelist and journalist Mohammed Hanif, who himself hails from Okara, had tweeted on Oct 28 about the plight of Natiq’s family who were running from pillar to post to register the case but the police were continuously turning a deaf ear to them. Hanif, from his Twitter handle tweeted and tagged Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif in it. He tweeted: “On Oct 25, a friend’s sister, high school teacher, Khadeeja was beaten to death by her husband in Chak 44D Okara. Still no FIR. @CMShehbaz”.

The same day, Hanif again tweeted: “Never felt more pathetic about this country. A high school teacher, mother of 4 brutally murdered and we are looking for sifarish for FIR.”

The CM took notice of Hanif’s tweets and a reply came from his twitter handle: “Hanif sb, sorry to hear this ... I have directed my staff to immediately revert with details & justice shall be ensured.”

The twitter handle of the Punjab government (@GovtOfPunjab) also got active and replied to Hanif and the CM through a number of tweets on the same day (Oct 28) saying: “On the instructions of @CMShehbaz we have taken the notice and spoke to DPO Okara about this incident”.

It also said that the government was ‘getting done with our initial requirements including forensic report an postmortem report and further action (FIR) will be taken based on the results of reports. We will keep you updated on this issue’.

After the case was registered on Oct 30, the Twitter handle of the tagged Mohammed Hanif again saying, ‘FIR has been launched after the post-mortem & due diligence. Since its a murder case, so there were pre-requisites to follow!’.

Natiq said that post-mortem reports had arrived on Oct 28 but still the registration of the case was delayed. He said the police claimed to have arrested the main suspect. But the information regarding the arrest could not be confirmed by the police. (Our Okara correspondnt also contributed to the story)

Published in Dawn, October 31st, 2016