PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court has rejected the bail plea of a man charged with killing his estranged wife in Swat district last year.

Justice Mohammad Ijaz Khan of a single-member bench ruled that the accused neither informed the police about the wife’s killing nor did he shift the body to the hospital for medico-legal examination and instead, he fled away after the murder.

He added that being the deceased’s husband, the suspect was to explain the cause of her unnatural death but he escaped, so prima facie, he was connected with the commission of the offence.

The bench observed that the records showed that after arrest, petitioner Abdullah confessed to the murder in a statement recorded with the relevant magistrate on Sept 10, 2022, which, prima facie, found support from all circumstances of the case and therefore, he was not entitled to the concession of bail.

Woman was killed in Swat last year

The bench observed that since the challan (charge sheet) had already been put in court and even the trial was under way, the trial court was directed to conclude proceedings within three months.

The complainant in the case was Khairur Rehman, father of the deceased woman, Abiya.

The FIR of the murder was registered at the Saidu Sharif police station, Swat, on March 14, 2022, under Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

According to the FIR, the accused and his wife used to live in the house of her uncle and the police received information about the woman’s killing by strangulation at the house in question.

The complainant had said that the accused was a drug addict and did no work for a living. He added that his daughter often asked the accused (her husband) to work but the latter used to quarrel with the former.

The complainant said that three days before the woman’s death, the couple had an altercation.

He added that his brother had spotted the accused hurriedly coming out of his room and leaving the house in the morning.

The police arrested the accused a few weeks later.

UPHELD: The bench rejected a petition seeking cancellation of the bail granted by a lower court to a man suspected of killing his wife in Swat last year.

It observed that the conduct of the accused Mashkoor Abdullah after the murder showed that he had acted in a natural manner and shifted his injured wife to the hospital, where he was present even at the time of postmortem.

The bench observed that in view of the accused’s natural conduct, the trial court rightly granted him the concession of bail.

The petition was filed by Ikramullah, a brother of the deceased, Samia Bibi, challenging bail for the accused on Aug 1, 2022, in Swat.

Following the murder, the police conducted an inquiry and charged complainant Ikramullah with killing his sister.

The complainant said before her death, his sister informed him over the phone on Jun 28, 2022, that two months ago, her husband (accused) had contracted a second marriage in Mansehra and forced her to go with him there so that the entire family could live together.

He added that his sister had declined to go with the accused to Mansehra over which he was annoyed.

The complainant claimed that his sister used to fear her murder by the accused.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2023