Court hands life sentence to woman for electrocuting husband

KARACHI: A woman, Asma, has been awarded life imprisonment by a court in Karachi for strangulating and also electrocuting her husband, Shah Zaman, with the help of her paramour, Ghulam Nabi alias Deedar, in 2019.

Announcing the verdict in the murder case, the additional district and sessions judge (West) also handed a death sentence to Deedar. The convicts attended the hearing via video link from their respective jails.

The court also ordered the convicts to pay a fine of Rs500,000 each as compensation to the legal heirs of the slain man.

During the hearing, the prosecution informed the court that the offenders attempted to stage the crime to appear as a suicide.

However, relatives of the deceased took his body to Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for a post-mortem examination after noticing scars on his wrists, chest, feet, ankles, and neck.

The post-mortem report confirmed that Shah Zaman died due to strangulation and electric shocks, prompting the complainant, Irfan Ahmed, to file a first information report (FIR).

On the other hand, Deedar's lawyer argued that his client's name was not initially included in the case and that the complainant, Ahmed, did not witness the incident himself. Furthermore, there was a delay in registering the FIR at the Pirabad police station.

The court, in its judgment, stated that the accused woman confessed to her crime before a judicial magistrate and apparently plotted the murder.

Additionally, testimonies from Zaman's two sons, who were among the eyewitnesses, confirmed the relationship between Asma and Deedar.

The statements also revealed that the accused had laced her husband's milk with sedative pills before he went to sleep, the court noted.

After sentencing the convicts, the court directed the superintendents of the respective jails to implement the penalties and issue conviction slips for Asma and Deedar.