PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench has granted bail to two brothers arrested in connected with honour-related murder of their sister-in-law, whose body was stuffed in a box at their residence in Swat district.

A single-member bench consisting of Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan accepted joint petition of the two suspects, Mohammad Yousaf and Mohammad Haroon, on condition of furnishing two sureties of Rs100,000 each.

Their parents have already been granted bail by the high court in the same case, whereas their brother Mohammad Faisal, who was husband of the deceased woman, has been absconding.

On March 1, 2022, the station house officer of Mingora police station received telephone call from one of the petitioners, Mohammad Yousaf, that there was foul smell coming from the room of their brother Mohammad Faisal, situated in the upper portion of their house.

Petitioners were charged by brother of their deceased sister-in-law

When the SHO visited the house, he found decomposing body of the deceased, Ms Noor, lying in a wooden box. A daughter of the victim told the police that two-three weeks ago there was an altercation between her parents after which she had not seen her mother and her father had told her that she had left the residence.

Initially, an FIR was registered against Mohammad Faisal, Later on, a brother of the deceased woman named Laiqat Ali recorded his statement with the police and also charged the present two petitioners along with their parents for the murder of his sister.

The prosecution claimed that the murder was honour-related as the suspects had doubts about character of the deceased woman.

Advocate Rashid Ali Khan appeared for the petitioners and contended that his clients were innocent and wrongly implicated in the case. He said that the occurrence was unseen one and the allegations against the petitioners were general in nature. He stated that no specific role had been assigned to the petitioners in the commission of the offence.

The counsel pointed out that one of the petitioners, Mohammad Yousaf, had himself called the police and informed them about foul smell coming from the room of his brother. He added that instead of making Mohammad Yousaf a prosecution witness, he was made co-accused in the case.

He contended that the medical evidence also negated the prosecution version of the occurrence, as no cause of death had been mentioned in the postmortem report.

The state counsel contended that the petitioners had been nominated in the case during investigation after statement of the brother of the deceased woman. He stated that the body of the deceased was recovered after around 20 days of the occurrence, and if the petitioners were not aware why they had not informed the police that their sister-in-law had been missing.

He said that the deceased was mother of five children and the last one was around four months of age.

Earlier, a subordinate court had rejected their bail petition observing that the petitioners had been charged for killing the deceased on the pretext of honour but no one could be permitted to take law in his hand and start executing culprits instead of handing them over to the court of law.

Published in Dawn,June 20th, 2022