Man gets 21-year jail term for torturing wife

A sessions court on Thursday handed down a 21-year imprisonment sentence to a man for torturing his wife and taking her indecent pictures. Additional District & Sessions Judge (Central) Zabiha Khattak found Aamir Baloch guilty of beating and burning his wife’s private parts in the New Karachi area in November 2016.

The judge said the prosecution placed sufficient evidence on record against the accused who was “unfortunately the husband of the complainant/victim, but he kept merciless behaviour with his own wife and he treated the victim as lesser than an animal”.

“The act of the accused is so much merciless that it is unbearable, as a wife is the life partner of the husband, and our religion as well as the Holy Prophet (PBUH) taught and directed to keep one’s wife happy, but in the present case, the accused kept her as a slave,” she wrote in her judgement.

She awarded a jail term of 21 years and three months to the convict and told him to pay Rs25,000 as compensation to the victim. The state prosecutor said the complainant and the accused had been living with his parents for 14 years since their marriage.

Some time after their marriage, the accused started maltreating the victim, and in 2015, he kicked her and beat her with his fists and large spoons, and also locked her in the house. She escaped from the house many times but he brought her back.

The prosecutor said the accused later chained her and confined her to his house, adding that he also cut her hair and eyebrows. She said the accused also subjected his wife to unnatural acts and burnt her private parts. The victim was forced to roam naked around the house as he took her pictures.

The woman had testified in her statement that her husband had broken her ear bone with a water bottle and burnt her private parts. The accused, however, denied all the charges and pleaded that he be acquitted for being innocent.

An FIR had been lodged under the Pakistan Penal Code’s sections 324 (attempted murder), 337-A(i) (Shajja), 337-F(i) (punishment of ghayr-jaifah), 292 (sale, etc., of obscene books, etc.), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 509 (insulting modesty or causing sexual harassment) and 337 (unnatural offence).