Afsheen Mussarat – Can anyone remember this name?
Who was she? What was her crime? Why she was killed?
Nadeem Saeed filed the following story for Dawn on December 25, 2003…
"Afsheen Mussarat died on November 12, 2003, at her father advocate Mussarat Hussain’s house in Multan. Her family buried her the next day at their ancestral village Marri Sahu in Kabirwala tehsil of Khanewal district.
A graduate in computer sciences from the Bahauddin Zakariya University, Mussarat belonged to the influential Sahu family of Kabirwala. She was married to her paternal cousin Nouman, a Pakistan Air Force pilot based at Shorkot, on September 13, 2003, reportedly against her will. She wanted to marry her maternal cousin Hasan Mustafa, who was her senior in the BCS course at the university.
She reportedly left her parent’s house on November 1, and arrived in Rawalpindi along with Mustafa. They rented a cottage at Bara Koh on the Islamabad-Murree road with the help of a friend and were in the process of filing a divorce suit with a civil court when Mustafa’s friend informed his parents about their whereabouts. Along with an acquaintance, Col. Alamgir Rajput, they showed up and surprised the couple on November 4, and later took them straight to the Army Guest House (AGH) in Rawalpindi.
She was reported dead on November 12.Mussarat’s sudden death gave rise to suspicions that she might have been killed. The suspicions became more serious when her family kept changing their stance about the cause of her death. Sometimes they said that she died of a cardiac arrest, sometimes they cited electric shock as the cause, and then they said she died due to some respiratory disease.
A medical board conducted a postmortem on Mussarat’s body on November 24, which confirmed that more than two people had strangled her to death. “Her body also had marks of resistance,” said a member of the board, who also disclosed that she was not properly buried. “We were in hurry,” Mussarat’s father told the police when interrogated in this regard.
Mussarat’s father, however, was arrested on November 26, and confessed to his crime, claiming that he alone took his daughter’s life by tying her dupatta around her neck after administering her meal which drugged her.
However, the police did not believe his statement and later on the chemical examiner’s report also supported their assertion. The report says that no poison was detected from the viscera of the deceased. “Mussarat Hussain wanted to shoulder the whole blame in order to save his accomplices,” said Multan district police officer Hamid Mukhtar Gondal."
The story goes on, there were protests, few arrests and later suspects were released.
Afsheen – God knows who killed you and how you were killed? You were daughter of my town and we would remember you in our prayers. But rest assured you were given the best possible treatment…
We are now more literate and civilised. We now bury women (including minors) alive in Balochistan or put before hungry dogs and then shoot them dead.
You should be grateful to your killers…
May God Bless Your Soul
