Kashmir valley is in deep shock as people are mourning the death of a woman who was allegedly killed by her son for monetary purposes. The son and his friend have been arrested by the Police.
The incident is not a solitary one, the spike in the crime rate in Kashmir valley has left many citizens worried. The overall crime graph in Jammu Kashmir showed an increase of 24.6 per cent in 2021 as compared to the previous year,the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) said in its latest report.
3,072 violent crimes were reported in 2021 including 315 cases of rape, 1,041 cases related to abduction, 751 cases of rioting, and 131 cases of arson. The report noted that the abduction cases crossed the three-digit mark in 2021 as the previous two years reported 961 such cases in 2019 and 868 in 2020.
On 21st October 2022, a news item people took as another death incident hit the internet. The news item was regarding the death of a 48-year-old woman who allegedly fell down from the slab of her house in the Gopalpora area of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district. The woman succumbed to her injuries the next morning.
The next morning (22 October 2022), women and men hit the streets demanding a probe into the incident, also alleging that Rizwana Bano (48) wife of Manzoor Ahmad Khan was murdered by her in-laws. The family alleged that the woman who was originally a resident of Achabal and married a few miles away in the Gopalpora area of Anantnag was murdered by her in-laws.
“The height is such that her in-laws left the hospital after she died instead of taking her body for last rites,” they said.
Speaking to the press, her son Aqib Manzoor had said, “My mother was being harassed for the past twenty years by her in-laws. For the past twenty years, they harassed my mother, sometimes over food, sometimes something else. For the past twenty years, my mother was being harassed constantly.”
Two years ago, my father divorced my mother, but the case was pending in the court, he added. “She told us that her in-laws will kill her so I had been watching over my mother for the past five days. I went out to buy some groceries and I was at the shop when I got a call that my mother had fallen off the slab. They went inside and took my mother to the slab and threw her off. She had wounds on her head. Her hands had been broken. We want an investigation of the case,” Aqib had told the press on 22 October, 20222.
After the woman succumbed to her injuries at the hospital, the Jammu Kashmir Police conducted an autopsy on the deceased woman that revealed that the woman had fatal injuries, and during the technical investigation, the pattern of injuries on the dead body did not correlate with the sequence of injuries of a possible slab fall, A Police official said.
A Police team headed by the concerned Station House officer Mattan was constituted who after inspecting the crime scene raised questions on the pattern of a fall as it seemed suspicious, the official said.
“The Jammu Kashmir Police initiated the proceedings in the case under the section 174 CRPC after the technical team of Jammu Kashmir Police which concluded that the woman had not died of a slab fall,” the official said.
During the early investigation, a few suspects were rounded up by Police and during the course of questioning several contradictions were noted which were further worked on and two more suspects were arrested which included her elder son (name concealed as the accused is a juvenile), a resident of Kehribal and Abid Hussain Ganie son of Farooq Ahmad Ganie, a resident of Kanganhall in Anantnag.
The detained accepted in Police custody to having committed the crime for monetary purposes.
In a press statement, the Jammu Kashmir Police claimed that on 21 October, At 1500hrs Abid Hussain Ganie had visited the house of the deceased woman where the son was waiting for him. “The duo tried to snatch money from the deceased which eventually led to a verbal spate,” the press statement read.
During the verbal spat, the son smashed his mother and forcefully punched her and she fell down in the kitchen. The duo later brought a big stone and the son then smashed the head of his mother which caused a grievous head injury and the lady has finally succumbed to these injuries, Jammu Kashmir Police said.
“After this, the duo changed the place of body, brought it outside and set the house articles in order and also placed the chappal of the deceased on the slab,” read the statement. The accused then took off the money and then fled away from the scene along with the money.
After a while, both the accused persons joined the family members who had taken the woman to the hospital.
The Jammu Kashmir Police said an FIR number 95/2022 U/s 302,34 was registered in the concerned Police station and during the course of further investigation, the weapon of offence was recovered.