Girl burned alive for refusing marriage proposal in Murree
The victim was set on fire by boy's family over a matrimonial dispute in Murree.
MURREE (Web Desk / AFP) – Day after struggling for life, 19-year-old Maria Sadaqat has succumbed to severe burn injuries at PIMS hospital in Islamabad today (Wednesday), Dunya News reported.
The victim was tortured and set on fire for refusing a marriage proposal from the son of a former colleague. She was attacked by a group of people on Monday in the village of Upper Dewal close to the summer hill resort of Murree, outside the capital Islamabad.
"She was badly tortured and then burned alive. We brought her to hospital in Islamabad but she succumbed to her wounds today," Abdul Basit, Maria‘s uncle, told AFP outside a burns centre at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in the capital.
Maria was admitted to hospital with 85 percent burns in critical condition.
Grieving relatives outside the centre wept and protested at the teenager‘s death as police moved her body to another hospital for a post-mortem.
Basit said his niece had been attacked by the principal of the private school where she had formerly worked as a teacher, and by his accomplices after she refused a marriage proposal from his son.
"He was divorced and twice her age, so she refused the proposal and left her job when they pursued her time and again... eventually they attacked her," Basit said.
Police said Sadaqat gave a statement before her death naming the principal and four others as her attackers.
"We have arrested at least one of the accused and a hunt is on for the rest," Mazhar Iqbal, the officer directing the murder investigation, told AFP.
A doctor at the hospital said Sadaqat had succumbed to serious burns.
"The poor woman was becoming better but then could not survive because most parts of her body had serious burn injuries," said Ayesha Ihsani.
It was the second time in just over a month that a Pakistani woman had been murdered over a marriage issue.
A woman believed to be aged between 16-18 was drugged, strangled and her body burnt on the orders of a village jirga (council) in northwest Pakistan on April 29, allegedly for helping a friend to elope with her lover.
Pakistan, home to roughly 190 million people, sees thousands of cases of violence against women every year, from rape and acid attacks to sexual assault, kidnappings and so-called "honour killings".
Domestic abuse, economic discrimination and acid attacks make Pakistan the world’s third most dangerous country in the world for women, a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll showed.
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