Woman’s warning on honour killings
An Australian woman allegedly killed by her father-in-law in Pakistan shared a prophetic warning just a year before her death.
An Australian woman allegedly killed by her father-in-law with an axe in Pakistan because he did not want her to take her children back to Australia shared a prophetic warning about the prevalence of honour killings just a year before her death.
Mother of three Sajida Tasneem, 32, died after she was allegedly gagged and bludgeoned to death with an axe in front of her father on June 11 in Sargodha, 190km north of Lahore.
Her father Sher Muhammad Khan said she had been pressured by her husband to leave the home she had made in Perth and move with her children to Pakistan, where they were living with her in-laws, BBC Urdu reported.
Ms Tasneem, a civil engineer, had wanted to return to Australia to give her children a better education but her in-laws had refused to allow her to relocate to a country of “infidels” and had confiscated their passports.
“We have been wronged,” Mr Khan told the BBC.
“My daughter’s only fault was that she came to Pakistan after being seduced by her husband.”
On the day of her death, Mr Khan arrived at the family home to find Ms Tasneem’s father-in-law Mukhtar Ahmad standing over her with an axe, according to a police report obtained by The Australian.
“Mukhtar Ahmad had put a cloth in my daughter’s mouth … with an axe to her head,” a translation of the report said.
“Mukhtar Ahmad threatened us that if anyone came near he would kill them too.
“So she succumbed to her injuries. I saw this incident with my own eyes.”
The report also said that Ms Tasneem often “quarrelled” with her in-laws.
Her father-in-law has been charged with her murder and other family members are under investigation, according to a local media report. Ms Tasneem’s three children are now in the care of her father.
A year before her death, Ms Tasneem shared a post on social media condemning the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, in which she wrote about a graveyard where women murdered by their “brothers, fathers or husbands” are buried without the Islamic ritual of “washing and shrouding”.
“Why is it that a woman is killed every time in the name of honour?” she said, in a translated social media post.
Friends described Ms Tasneem as a “positive and beautiful soul” who quickly made friends among the Pakistani community in Perth, where she was actively involved in cooking classes and community activities after she moved there in 2013.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed that it was providing consular assistance to her family.
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