http://www.dawn.com/weekly/review/review4.htm
Another victim of karo-kari
Nisar Khokhar
Ruqia Kehar is another innocent victim of the curse of karo kari, reports Nisar Khokhar.
One day after Eid ul Fitr, fifteen year old Ruqia Kehar was brutally murdered by her uncles and brother as she was declared kari. The incident occurred in Agani Village, some 14-km away from Larkana City. Her uncles, including Manzoor Kehar, fled the scene moments after the incident and remain on the loose. So far, the Larkana police has failed to arrest the real culprits of the case.
As narrated by Ruqia’s family, one of her uncles had observed Ruqia in an"objectionable act" with Masud Kehar, a young boy. When forced to describe what was the objectionable act, they revealed that Masud had touched Ruqia’s hand in the street. Ruqia was returning home from a family ceremony of the Kehar family. Villlagers and eyewitnesses reported that Masud had touched Ruqia’s hand to ask why she hadn’t danced at the party but Ruqia had rebuked the boy for approaching herinformally. Her uncle, however, watched from the corner of the street, and made an issue out of it, considering it an affront to their feudal ego. Manzoor Kehar reached home and misreported the incident at their joint family home and declared that the girl should be killed. He then went to look for his gun. Shahmir and Mushtaque, her other uncles and the brother joined him and the three angry men fired shots, attempting to take her life. The women in the house intervened and tried to save Ruqia’s life. As the women and the mother surrounded the innocent girl, Ruqia was made to run for safety to her khala’s house, while they took the blows and laathis of the men. Ruqia ran as fast as she could to her khala’s home but death loomed as the killers reached there before she could. Though the women in the house tried to resist, Manzoor and Shahmir overpowered the women and snatched away the girl, dragging her into a room. Ruqia kept crying for help while the women outside also screamed and cried helplessly. “We offered them the Holy Book and our chaddars to prevent them from murdering Ruqia, but they forced us to stay out of room,” Mrs. Irshad Khatoon revealed at the women police station, Larkana. The three female members of the Kehar family arrested by the police revealed that the killers used bricks to bludgeon Ruqia as they had run out of bullets. They used big bricks to kill her. It is still not confirmed whether Ruqia was dead then or she was just unconscious after the torture.
Mystery shrouds why the dead body of Ruqia has not been recovered till now by the Larkana police. It has also not been ascertained whether it was thrown in the nearby Dadu Canal or buried inside the thick forests. No funeral prayers were held for Ruqia and no fateha was accepted. However, female members mourned the death amongst themselves and accepted the sympathies of other visiting women.
It is alleged that the concerned police helped the killers hide the gruesome murder for a week. The Public Safety Commission of the district government concluded that the suspended SHO of Mahotta Police Station, Abdul Nabi Rind, was an essential accomplice of the murder case. It is said that the SHO Rind had been informed earlier and was consulted by the killers. The SHO had let the killers go ahead with the murder of the innocent girl after allegedly receiving a bribe of 60,000 rupees. Higher police officials have suspended SHO Rind without arresting him. The suspension of the SHO has posed questions as to how spontaneous and prompt this action was on the murder. If the murder had been cleared with the police earlier, why was the innocent girl declared kari in the evening? It is further alleged that Ruqia’s uncle had some ulterior motives and had a secret vendetta with the boy’s family.
The family and Masud, a tonga driver who was declared karo, have fled from the village.His other relatives, including the principal of SZABIST, Altaf Kehar, an uncle of Masud, has also fled in fear. He was posted at SZABIST, Larkana and has now applied for a transfer to Karachi.
The criminal silence on the part of the human rights groups has allowed the police to play with the case according to its whims. No significant arrests have been made and the Larkana police seems in no hurry to solve the case. Though it was the police itself that registered the FIR on behalf of the state against the father, mother, uncles and brother of Ruqia, they have showed no progress in apprehending the killers in the case so far. Sources say that an influential ex-MPA of the area was approached by the parents of Ruqia, who assured them that he would protect them from the police and also appreciated thattheyhad “cut off the ugly finger”. The feudal mentality of the ex-MPA, the police as well as the alleged killers have worked in unison to rid what they considered an ugly finger, an expression proverbially used in Sindh.
As no human or woman’s rights group has intervened in Ruqia’s case, there is rising concern that the police and the alleged killers will reach a mutually beneficial agreement to settle the case. If that happens, more innocent women will be murdered and the police will shelf such cases as blind murders.
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How unfortunate that being a muslim country the karo-kari is not only practiced but criminals get away so easily in Pakistan. The murders get away and police arrested only thw “women” of the family. This case show how police, Ex-MNA and villagers worked untied in executing this crime.