Skip to main content

Pak girl commits suicide after parents held in India

KARACHI: A teenaged Pakistani girl committed suicide after her parents were arrested and held in an Indian jail for nearly six months, police officials in Karachi said. Mohammad Hussain, his wife Yasmeen and eight-year-old son Abdul Karim went to see a family in the city of Jodphur in March but were arrested two months later on visa forgery charges. “One of Hussain's six daughters he left at home, 17-year-old college student Saba, became so distressed at her parents' continued detention that she took her own life,” police official Sajjad Hassan said. "On Saturday, she was found unconscious in her house in the evening and was brought to a hospital where doctors found a heavy quantity of poison in her stomach," he added. The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said in a statement that the girl committed suicide out of desperation and also because the family had little resources to support themselves. "The girl committed suicide to protest against the increasingly desperate situation due to her parents' and brother's detention in India," the AHRC statement said. The group appealed to the Pakistani and Indian prime ministers to help secure the release of Saba's parents and many other Pakistanis whom the Indian authorities had arrested on "dubious charges". Currently at least 61 Pakistanis, including some children, are detained in Indian jails, according to an AHRC count. Hashim said four of Hussain's daughters were schoolgirls who were also distressed at what had happened to their parents and had quit school. "They are mentally disturbed and cry for their parents," Hassan said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Snake bite deaths

Monday, July 06, 2009 COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government recorded some 33,000 snake bites in 2008, with most of the victims coming from remote villages.The Department of Government Information said in a statement that most of the snake bite cases could be fatal if neglected.The statement said snake bites are often neglected in Sri Lanka as victims do not seek treatment at hospitals where advanced medication is available. Instead, the victims rush to traditional type of treatment which could be a risk, reports Xinhua.Snake bites death at domestic level, outside hospitals, go unrecorded, said the statement.Most victims of snake bite are from the rural and remote villages where there is no electricity after dusk.Statistics show that Sri Lanka has over 90 species of snake with around 10 species possessing venom capable of killing a human being.In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world being 6 in 100,000 population.

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...