KARACHI – Muhammad Sarwar, the maternal uncle of Shumaila Kanwal, the deceased widow of Muhammad Faheem, one of the men shot and killed by Raymond Davis, was attacked on Thursday for what the family claims is the second time in less than a week.
The family is being pressured to stop giving statements to the media, Faheem’s brother Muhammad Waseem told Pakistan Today. Shumaila’s family, which lives in Faisalabad, had been receiving verbal threats from the day she died. “Then on Monday, some goons visited her uncle and threatened him again, but they were not violent,” Waseem said.
“They looked ‘gora’ but spoke perfect Urdu without an accent, so we’re not sure who they were or what they wanted. All they said was that Sarwar should stop giving statements to the media.” Early on Thursday morning, three men entered Sarwar’s house again, beat him up, and allegedly forced him to swallow ‘poisonous pills.’
The men escaped when other members of the family woke up. Sarwar was rushed to the hospital where his stomach was pumped. He is said to be out of danger. “This time around, the men were different. But Sarwar was traumatised and couldn’t give details about their ethnicity or even their physical appearance,” Waseem said.
“Again, we are not sure who they were.”
Sarwar had been pursuing the case of Shumaila’s death which, while billed as a suicide, has more sinister undertones, according to sources close to the family. “She had tried to commit suicide, but she was rushed to the hospital on time; her stomach was pumped twice, and her condition was said to be stable,” they said. “The family met her and she appeared to be well on her way to recovery.
She also gave at least two television interviews. For several hours after what is being said to be her time of death, doctors kept Shumaila on a ventilator and kept telling the family that she was recovering. Then all of a sudden, they were told that she had died.”
Right after this announcement, contingents of policemen surrounded the hospital. The family was not allowed to bring Shumaila’s body to Lahore and bury her beside her husband as she would have wished. “The autopsy report has also disappeared. When the family asked for it, they were told that it was sent to Lahore. Then they were told that it was sent to the federal capital Islamabad. Despite repeated requests, a copy has not been handed over to them.
In the meantime, they have also been pressured repeatedly to stay quiet by the local MNA and MPA, both of whom are from PML-N,” said the source. Faheem’s family, meanwhile, does not wish to pursue Shumaila’s case just yet. “We know a lot of things about a lot of aspects in the entire case,” Waseem maintained. “But we will speak about them only after we know for sure where the case against Davis is headed.
We’re poor people and can’t be expected to keep running after court cases forever. We just want to know whether he will be tried or whether he has immunity.”
