Father admits to 40-day Chilla

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Karachi Nadeem, the man who killed his four-month-old girl, has admitted that the couple were in a forty day ‘Chilla’, and had murdered their child to offer a ‘sacrificial’ gift to the ‘Pirs’, said Zaman Town Police Station Additional Station House Officer (SHO) Aziz Muhammad Maken. “When I received the complaint from Umar, who had told me that Nadeem had locked the room, we immediately went to the house. Since the door of the room was locked, we had to break in,” Maken narrated. “When we entered the room, Nadeem shouted at us for disrupting the Chilla, and stated that God’s wrath would befall us. We were also prevented from going to the storeroom where Fazeelat was buried, and Sana told us that there were Djinns in the room. That is where we found Marium, who was tied up and her mouth was taped,” he said. Nadeem’s wife, Sana, told The News that Fazeelat’s body was lying unwrapped for three days, and claimed that they were ‘too scared’ to ask for help from others. “For three days, we continued the recitation as we were scared and buried her after we were able to dig up a grave,” she said According to the police officials present at the station, the couple gave more importance to continuing their recitals, than burying the child. “I am astonished that such parents exist,” said a female police official, saying that it was natural for the body to turn black if it had not been buried. While answering a question regarding why she had tied Marium’s hands and her feet, Sana said: “Something was pulling Marium away, and that’s why I had tied her to my own feet so that she would be safe and protected. Our own fault is that my husband and I chose to remain silent her, and we didn’t tell our neighbours about Fazeelat’s ‘un-natural’ death,” she said. —RA caption The ‘grave’ of four-month-old Fazeelat, that was dug up inside the storeroom of the quarter —The News photo