Daily Times

The title is provocative, and is meant to be. When the slant put on the judgement of a case declares a suicide verdict, it is important to focus on the players who manipulated to seed this interpretation. Controversy hangs over the death of the 19-year-old school teacher, Maria Sadaqat, from Murree, who died from burn injuries at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad on June 1 for allegedly refusing a marriage proposal. In Maria’s case, council for the accused promoted a suicide basis from the beginning, but many of the explanations they made do not make a sense. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had advised a commission to investigate into the killing, which concluded supporting the suicide verdict.

Crime-scene reconstruction is of value when reconstruction is started at the scene during the initial phases of the investigation, during the investigation, and during the adjudication process. The forensic expert may determine, while the interviews are being conducted, if the stories being told by the victims, witnesses, and suspects are true. By knowing the events as reconstructed, the investigating officer conducting the interviews may be able to detect deception or Crime Scene Reconstruction inconsistencies as reported by the forensic expert. The use of this knowledge can be a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced investigator. No such reports were available for the courts to be seen.

A two-member Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) fact-finding mission consisting of two former SCBA presidents, Asma Jahangir and Kamran Murtaza, highlights a number of crucial observations where flawed assessments have given rise to crimes against women, particularly honour killing, and accused are finding more sympathy than the victim. And it also explores how professional fallibility may have led to erroneous interpretations regarding the death of Maria. It also raises the more sinister possibility that biased assessments were weighted deliberately with the express purpose of convincing the courts that it was suicide.

Astonishingly, it is not a question of just a few bad apples in the barrel; the very system that investigates professional incompetence and malpractice is itself flawed. Police methods of investigation described in the media demonstrate a continuing pattern of inadequate and unsatisfactory examinations, and breaches of accepted forensic pathology practice. Police investigations, however, concluded that Maria’s death was a case of suicide and not murder, and later declared the main accused innocent, after which he was also granted bail. It may be a cynical view, but they wanted to keep the lid on things.

Given that, at least the first part of the human body to be burnt in a self-immolation attempt would be the hands. The deceased’s statement that she had been held to the ground by four men seemed to be the explanation for her hands, feet and face being saved from burning. In the 40 hours that the victim was alive, she consistently accused Master Shaukat and his accomplices of setting her on fire. Therefore it begs the question: if these police investigations were collecting evidence for criminal case, were some of these mistakes and omissions made deliberately, or allowed to pass, for malafide reasons? With fallibility and corruption in mind, it may be instructive to review Maria’s testimony to the judicial appeal.

From forensic point of view, even if one ignores all the other features of Maria’s case there lays the rub. Ignore the fact that Maria had become an embarrassment to the expected in- laws family by refusing the marriage proposal? Ignore the fact that she made the dying declaration? How do you explain the mendacity? The fact that there was a woman on deathbed scrupulous about a truth they did not want told? As it is said, a dying declaration is based on the maxim nemo moriturus praesumitur mentire (a man will not meet his maker with a lie in his mouth). Maria had met her killers, and was revealing the story of her murder. Far from ignoring her pivotal physical position at the time of her death, additional insults like disparaging her character and putting her family under pressure are the unaccountable points attached to the case. As one explores the forensic evidence provided at the death scene, the fact remains that there were elements guarding this case who wanted Maria silenced in letting her give the understanding how she died.

Violence against Maria Sadaqat is not an anomaly. In November 2015 after refusing a proposal, Sonia Bibi, 20, was attacked by her ex-boyfriend in Multan, and died of her injuries in hospital. In May 2016, village elders near Abbottabad ordered the murder of a teenage girl who was burnt to death because she helped a friend to elope. On 8th June 2016, Zeenat Rafiq, who was 18, was burnt, and there were signs of torture and strangulation. She was doused with fuel and set alight. And it does not stop here; there are hundred other cases in Pakistan, where attacks on women who go against conservative rules on love and marriage are common.

According to the Independent Human Rights Commission Pakistan nearly 1,100 women were killed by relatives in Pakistan in year 2015 in so-called honour-killings. Punjab government passed a landmark law criminalising domestic violence, stalking, cybercrime and other forms of abuse earlier this year, but a coalition of more than 30 groups has demanded its withdrawal. Hard to believe but the Council of Islamic Ideology, a constitutional body that advises the Pakistani government, declared the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act 2015 “un-Islamic.”

The death investigator needs to be cognizant of the possibility that a crime scene may in fact be staged to mislead the authorities or redirect the investigation. These events seem to be on the increase as people learn more about the process of death investigation through the media, true crime books, television mystery shows and movies. Equivocal death investigations are those inquiries that are open to interpretation. There may be two or more meanings, and the case may be presented as either a homicide or a suicide depending upon the circumstances.

The facts are purposefully vague or misleading in the case of Maria Sadaqat, and hint towards a staged crime scene. The death may resemble homicides or suicides, but it is open to interpretation pending further information of the facts, the victimology and the circumstances of the event. In staged crime scenes, however, the presentation of the homicide victim and the manipulation of the crime scene by a clever offender could make the death appear to be a suicide. I have personally investigated many such cases and the truth of the matter is that initially the cases did look
like suicides.

The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com