Woman, neighbour handed down life imprisonment for murdering husband

A model court has sentenced a woman and her friend to life imprisonment for the murder of her husband in 2017.

Fouzia and Talha were found guilty of strangling her husband Allauddin to death at their house within the limits of the Pakistan Bazaar police station. Additional District and Sessions Judge (West) Syed Nadeem Zafar Hashmi observed that in the cases of this nature, the death penalty was not a suitable punishment for the accused woman.

"This is more so in a case like this where circumstantial evidence largely form the basis of conviction, which is evidence which one must view with great caution and as such sentence of life imprisonment with compensation/ fine is sufficient/ suitable," he added.

Taking a lenient view, the judge awarded life term to the woman and her friend Talha and ordered both the convicts to pay Rs500,000 each as compensation to the legal heirs of the deceased. Upon failure to pay the compensation, they would have to undergo additional six-month imprisonment.

The court put the case against Zafar Supari, who absconded during the trial, on the dormant file till his arrest. According to the prosecution, on the night of June 12, 2017, Fouzia murdered Allauddin in collusion with Talha and Supari by strangling him with a rope or cloth tied around his neck.

The complainant's lawyer and the state prosecutor contended that this was the brutal murder of an innocent person at the hands of his wife due to her objectionable relationship with their neighbour Talha. They argued that the prosecution witnesses had implicated the accused in their testimonies that had been corroborated by other piece of evidence brought on record.

They said that the deceased's daughter, Anshara, was an eyewitness to her father's murder and fully implicated the accused, adding that she saw the accused committing the murder of her father when she was 12 years old.

In her statement, the accused woman claimed that she was innocent and had committed no any offence, adding that her brother-in-law lodged a false FIR just to deprive her of her inherited share in the property of the deceased. She alleged that the complainant had also brainwashed her daughter who was 12 years old at the time of her father's death to testify against her.