I have read these news in the BBC, and I find the whole thing a terrible tragedy for everybody involved.
Summing up - in Pakistan, a young woman who a couple of months ago had been forced by her parents to marry somebody she didn’t want to (she ended up running away back to her parents’ home from her husband’s only days after the wedding, but her parents forcibly took her back to him) ended up trying to kill her husband with poisoned milk.
The husband didn’t drink the milk, which was later taken by the husband’s mother and used to prepare a batch of lassi (yoghurt-like beverage) that was drunk by a lot of people in the husband’s extended family.
27 people were poisoned. 15 dead so far (husband included), among them several children. Perhaps more in the next days.
This is an unmitigated tragedy, for everybody.
The woman, forced into a marriage she did not want, and acting in desperation.
Her parents, who now will always be tortured by a lot of “if only we had…”
The many people who were killed and were perfectly innocent in all this mess.
This is horrible. Forced marriages may be considered to be “traditional” in many places, but I think that in general they bring more misery and pain than anything else.
JoseB here is some free advice. From my own experience. Criminals are stupid. The also make untenable excuses for their actions. Real life is not like the movies. There is no (or rarely) sudden breakdown in the interrogation room/witness stand wherein the criminal tearfully admits to their guilt. They stick to their story and claims no matter how implausible its shown to be. Don’t take criminals at their word. In Pakistan. In Spain. In Holland.
I have dealt with actual abused women/children, so I am aware of the major problems with domestic abuse. While the matter is sub judice, I have great difficulty believing the claims made thus far in the absence of evidence. I do have a lot of ease in believing that you have a Defence Counsel who is making sure that as much materials get to the media, so there is pressure to deal with her leniently, as most readers of the national press are gullible urbanites who are typically all too willing to believe the worst about country bumpkins.
I mean she claims that they did not let her divorce her husband. Evidently, according to her story, they had no problem letting her spend most of her time with an ex-BF.
She claims that her mother in law accidentally placed poison in the lassi (a kind of yougurt drink) which she served guests. Her Husband, (who is not dead BTW) refused to touch it, but others all drank it and croaked/fell ill. Yeah right.
Thanks for all the information! Sources much closer to the origin are always very much appreciated, and help see situations with more clarity.
Obviously, I have been keeping abreast of the situation through the reports published around here. One of the things all of them said was that the husband had died; if he hasn’t, some things change.
And it is true that that amount of poison (sufficient to affect 27 people and kill 15 of them) seems like tremendous overkill if originally intended only for the husband. Although, well, I can believe that someone might be intending to kill only one person, decide on a “better safe than sorry” option and go seriously overboard with the dose.
In any case, it was a terrible thing to happen, and if indeed there was a forced marriage involved in the mix, it might have been a factor in the whole chain of events.
You’re assuming she knew how to calculate dosage. I strongly doubt she did, or that she even considered the notion. Not because of information about her, but based on how bad people in general are at understanding the concept itself.
Its not dosage that’s the issue. Her claim is that she had bought poison (vide her ex-BF who her evil abusive, divorce disallowing inlaws mysteriously permitted her to regularly meet) to kill her husband vide putting it in his tea. She then claims he refused to take said tea. She says then her mother-in-law later accidentally served poisonous lassi (a yogurt drink) having used poisoned milk to make it (she says she hid the poison in a milk pack).
Yeah. Sure. One 1000mL pack was used to make 30 servings of lassi? Which is normally drunk in pitchers? And her story, if accepted, very coincidentally avoids a murder or an attempted murder charge and instead gets her at best a manslaughter and conspiracy one?
No, one milk pack, added to several other milk packs then turned into lassi … sheesh. I know when I am making something for a crowd I may go through the current open jug of milk and then get into the new unopened one [not going to waste the one already sitting in my fridge!]
<shrug> as to whether or not the marriage was abusive [may very well have been but I wasn’t there to see it ] and she may have had some reason to still be allowed contact with an ex, but again, I am not a member of the family and do not know the family dynamics.
That being said, if I had an arranged marriage and wanted my husband dead, I would wait until he was asleep and pith him with a long bodkin. [unless it was known he used drugs in some manner, even if it was only prescription sleeping aids, then I would arrange it to look like an overdose.] Poison seems a bit messy as it isn’t as specifically targeted.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion about the likelihood of her story or to doubt your suspicion of the facts, but even under her story, isn’t she looking at one count of attempted murder (her husband’s tea) and 15 counts of manslaughter?
Basically, isn’t she in the same position as somebody who fires a gun at one person while intending to kill him, but instead shoots 15 other people dead?
Really ? I’ve never heard of pleading guilty to only manslaughter in such a case… “Certainly I put poison in the food, but I only meant to murder X, the multiple deaths were just a tragic accident for which I will never forgive myself.”
“I will have to live with this for the rest of my life.”
Whacking someone is easy, its checking that box on the cops mind when they arrive on the scene, and a spousal unit has death till you parted. Since the prime suspect in all murders is the surviving spouse, until other evidence is brought to bear that removes the spouse from being a person of interest.
Poke him with a bodkin, I’m sure that forensics is going to pick that up. Now if he went on an ice fishing trip and tragically went into the water and succumbed to hypothermia, now the cop is gonna think he is a dumbass and at most send him for a cursory autopsy and tox test, and you get the life insurance.
I cannot understand why so many people are so dead set against arranged marriages, when such a high percentage of marriages “for love” end in divorce. “We’ll love each other forever! Oops! It turns out that we have ‘irreconcilable differences,’ and we really don’t love each other after all.”
Studies have found that arranged marriages are essentially just as successful as any other kind.
Reminds me of the teen who killed both his parents then begged the Court for leniency since tragically he was now an orphan.
Nasty situations breed nasty behaviors. Nasty people breed both. And keep breeding. It’s the Circle of (Low-)Lifes.