Man arrested for burning wife, two kids to death

Police arrested a man on Tuesday in connection with the mysterious deaths of a woman and her two minor children in a fire at their house in Jamshed Quarters last month.

Police believe that it was not an accident, but that the suspect, the woman’s husband, had murdered his family.

The man’s wife and their two minor children had died in the fire on March 22. The victims were identified as 35-year-old Shumaila, 11-year-old Sufiyan and five-year-old Anisa. Police and the family had initially claimed that the three had died of suffocation and burn injuries.

The woman, who hailed from Hazara Division, lived on the first floor and her parents on the ground floor of the small house. Her husband’s house is located on the same street, but police and the family had claimed that she was living at her parents’ house because her husband worked abroad.

But the case took a U-turn after the officials investigating the case rejected the statements of the family, including the husband Junaid, who claimed to have returned from Malaysia a day after the incident.

“We had doubts about the incident from day one,” the investigating officer of the case, Inspector Imtiaz Banday, told The News. “The strange thing is that no one had heard the woman or her children screaming when the fire broke out in the small room.”

The officer said that the second thing is that the woman’s husband refused to have post-mortem examinations conducted on the deceased as well as to register a case on March 27. “After his refusal, we registered a murder case on behalf of the state and initiated investigations. We also interrogated him, but his statement has contradictions.”

The officer said that the police took Junaid into custody and interrogated him thoroughly. “We got a lead in the investigation when we checked his travelling record, which confirmed that he had returned to the country on March 16,” explained the IO.

“When we started interrogating him, he admitted that he had returned to Karachi on March 16 and was staying at a guesthouse in the Defence neighbourhood without informing his family.”

The officer said: “He is giving different statements. Sometimes he says he set his wife on fire during a fight. Sometimes he says she committed suicide over a dispute. But it has been confirmed that he was at the house at the time of the incident.”

Inspector Banday said that it was apparently a case of premeditated murder, as the suspect had returned to the country and was staying at a guesthouse without informing his family and other relatives, and then he also confirmed his presence at home at the time of the incident.

“We suspect that he set them on fire after giving them some poisonous substance, as no one heard them cry or shout during the fire. We have asked the relevant authorities for exhuming the bodies to conduct their autopsies to confirm if they were poisoned before being burned.”

The officer said that the suspect claimed that he had a fight with his wife because she used to force him to return from Malaysia on a permanent basis, but the actual motive behind the incident is yet to be ascertained.

The IO said that it would take two to four days to exhume the bodies in the presence of a magistrate and then conduct their autopsies, adding that their autopsy and chemical exam reports will help solve the case.