The family of a British woman believed by Pakistani police to have been murdered by two of her relatives in the country have forced police to begin an investigation into whether she was legally married to her second husband at the time of her death.
In an attempt to derail the “honour killing” trial, the family of Bradford-born Samia Shahid hopes to discredit her husband, Mukhtar Syed Kazam, by demanding police investigate their claim that she was in an illegal relationship with him.
The person who first reports a crime, in this case Kazam, has a particularly important status in Pakistani law because the information they provide forms the basis for a document which obliges police to launch an inquiry.
Masroor Shah, the family’s lawyer, said they would prove that divorce documents from her first marriage, provided by Kazam, were forged and undermine his credibility in court.
“If we can show that her first marriage was not lawfully terminated in Pakistan or the UK then the fact that [Kazam] has himself admitted cohabiting with an already married woman is a very, very serious offence under Pakistani law,” he said. “In the witness box, if he comes and testifies, it will be very easy for us as defence counsels to shackle the credibility of that witness. If we show he was lying in one context he may not be believed in another context.”
The family hoped the legal action might even deter Kazam from returning to Pakistan from his home in Dubai to give evidence against them, Shah added.
Kazam denies the family’s claim of forgery, and has maintained his marriage to Shahid was legal.
Shahid was found dead in her father’s house in the village of Pandori on 20 July. Local police initially accepted the family’s claim that the healthy 28-year-old had died unexpectedly. But following pressure from Shahid’s MP in Bradford, an investigation by senior Pakistani police officers concluded she was the victim of a “premeditated and cold-blooded honour killing”.
The Pakistani police report alleged she had been raped and murdered by her first husband, a cousin called Mohammad Shakeel, whom her family had arranged for her to marry in 2012.
The high-level investigation also alleged that Shahid’s father, Mohammad Shahid, had held her down while Shakeel strangled her to death.
The two men have been in custody for months. Although they have been charged, they are yet to be formally indicted by the court hearing their case. Their lawyer says they will be pleading not guilty.
The police report claims that the family tricked Shahid into leaving the safety of Dubai, where she was living with Kazam, to visit them in their ancestral village by falsely claiming her father was gravely ill.
The family never recognised Shahid’s divorce from Shakeel in 2014 or her subsequent marriage to Kazam, who was not only not a member of their clan but also a Shia Muslim.
Shah said the family’s deep sense of shame over her divorce and remarriage had made them determined to take legal action against Kazam. “It is very important for them to regain the esteem of society and regain the family honour that they feel they have lost,” he said.
The re-investigation of the case by senior police officers concluded that Shahid had legally divorced.
The family responded by first taking the matter to a local court before going to the Lahore high court, which ruled in their favour.
Although claims of “honour” killings are common and often not properly investigated in Pakistan, the Shahid case attracted intense interest after Naz Shah, MP for Bradford, wrote to the country’s prime minister Nawaz Sharif demanding action. The MP, who also met Pakistan’s interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, in London last week, said the Pakistani government remained determined to get justice for Shahid.
