CHITRAL: Two young women committed suicide on a single day – one each in Upper and Lower Chitral – on Friday, according to police.
In the first incident, Nausheen Rehmat, 19, a resident of Bilphok village, on Garam Chashma road near the Chitral town, reportedly hanged herself with a ceiling fan in her house.
A police official said the woman took her life after failing to clear the test for admission to the BSc Nursing program at the Aga Khan University (AKU), Karachi.
The second incident took place in Zanglasht village of Torkhow in Upper Chitral, where a married woman, Halima Bibi, 25, was found hanging by a rope attached to a beam in a room of her house.
Subdivisional police officer (SDPO) Torkhow Bahadur Khan said the deceased was mother of two. He said the reason behind her committing suicide could not be ascertained immediately.
He said the husband of the woman, Fida Ali Shah, was not present at home when the woman killed herself. The dead body was shifted to the DHQ hospital Lower Chitral for postmortem, he added.–Report by Zahiruddin (Dawn).
Suicide cases in Chitral have reached an alarming level and drastic measures are needed to overcome this situation. Most of the suicide cases in Chitral involve young women.
According to ‘Rising trend of suicides among youth in Chitral: a sociological analysis’ conducted by teachers Noor Sanauddin and Dr Imran Sajid of the University of Peshawar and Zafar Ahmad of the Jehanzeb College Swat, 176 people ended their life in Chitral from 2013 to 2019 and 58 per cent of them (102) were women.
No postmortem in Upper Chitral
Meanwhile, due to lack of arrangements for conducting postmortem, relatives of victims are facing hardship. It’s also affecting investigation in criminal cases.
PTI Upper Chitral information secretary Sher Afgan told ChitralToday that the government hospital in Booni has no arrangements for conducting postmortem.
He said the young woman who committee suicide on Aug 25 belonged to the Awi village. Her body had to be taken from Torkhow to the Chitral town for postmortem.
Even doctors at the DGQ hospital Chitral hesitate to conduct postmortem on dead bodies of suicide and murder victims from Upper Chitral, causing delays in the process and creating hardships for the families.
He said Upper Chitral was made a separate district by the previous PTI government in 2018, but so far the THQ hospital in Booni has not been upgraded.
He demanded that facilities should be provided at the hospital in Booni to ensure timely postmortem in such cases.