Pakistani-British woman's honour killing: Pak court remands ex-husband, father to judicial custody

Lahore: The father and the former husband of a 28-year-old British-Pakistani woman, who are suspected of murdering her in a so-called honour killing, were on Monday remanded to 14-day judicial custody pending trial.

Chaudhry Shakeel, Samia Shahid’s first husband, and her father Mohammad Shahid were sent into the remand by a court in Jhelum in Punjab province.

Samia, from Bradford, was found dead on 20 July in mysterious circumstances in the province. Police told the court that their work of evidence collection had been completed and sought to have Shakeel and Shahid sent into judicial remand, Geo news reported. The hearing was adjourned till 5 September.

Earlier this month, Samia’s first husband had confessed to strangulating her to death, police had confirmed. “I strangled Samia to death using a dupatta,” Shakeel had said in a statement recorded with the police. Samia, a resident of Jehlum, some 230 km from Lahore, had come to Pakistan from Dubai about two weeks ago to see her ailing father.

A beauty therapist from Bradford, Samia had previously been married to her first cousin Shakil but the couple parted ways after divorce in May 2014. She then married Kazim of Taxila in September 2014 and both started living in Dubai.

She was found dead on 20 July in mysterious circumstances.

Samia’s family insisted she died of a heart attack. Later they changed their statement to claim that she had committed suicide. Samia’s husband Syed Mukhtar Kazam however maintained that she was the victim of so-called ‘honour killing’ because she had rebelled against wishes of the family, divorced her first husband Shakeel and married him in Bradford in 2014.