Mystery deepens over ‘suicide’ of two girls

BOONI: Suspicions have increased over the reported suicidal death of two girls in Terich in Mulkhow valley of Upper Chitral while the police is yet to start an investigation into the case.

Sources told ChitralToday that on Monday night the Upper Chitral district police received information that two girls, aged between 19 and 20 and residents of Longol, Terich, have committed suicide by jumping into a river due to domestic issues.

The sources in the police identified the victims as Rukhsana, daughter of Ghafar, and Gulfam Bibi, daughter of Saeed Ahmed.

Relatives of the two girls claimed that they had committed suicide. They also claimed that both the girls were mentally disturbed, local sources added.

However, a resident of the village, who did not want to be named, told ChitralToday that the deceased had no history of mental illness. He said a few hours before the incident, some youngsters in the locality of the two girls had detained three boys who had come there from Nishku on bikes.

The youngsters seized the mobile phones of the boys along with their bikes. Later, however, the three boys were let off on the intervention of a local elder. Soon afterward, the two girls reportedly committed suicide.

When contacted, an official in the Mulkhow police station told ChitralToday on the phone that a postmortem was conducted on the bodies of the two girls on Tuesday.

In reply to a question, he said the police would soon launch an inquiry into the case and after its completion would register a first information report (FIR). 

He said the deceased were not related to each other, and it would be premature to say anything about the case before completion of the probe. During the investigation, the police will look into the case from different angles, he added. 

When asked if the detention of the Nishku boys in the locality of the girls had any link with the incident, he said nobody has so far come forward to tell the police what had happened just before or after the death of the two girls. But during the investigation, the police would look into all aspects of the case to reach a conclusion.

Social media activists  expressed suspicions over the claim of the family members that the two girls had committed suicide. 

Chitral district bar association president and coordinator Human Rights Programme Niaz A  Niazi Advocate suspected that the girls had been coerced into killing themselves.

In a social media post, he demanded that a proper investigation should be conducted and those involved should be proceeded against under the law.

Rights and social activists have for long been stressing the need to launch a proper investigation into each and every case of suicide in Chitral, especially by young women. They suspect that in most of such cases relatives murdered women and declared the incidents as suicide.

Last year, a teenage girl and a young man were found killed and their bodies were dumped in a wooded area in Oveer valley of Upper Chitral. Later, it transpired that they had been murdered for honour. However, no one from the families of the two deceased reported the case to the police.