Maria Golovnina, the Pakistan and Afghanistan bureau chief of Reuters based in Islamabad who was found dead on February 23, died due to a shortage of oxygen.
A postmortem report by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) revealed that the journalist had marks on her neck when her body was found. The report has been forwarded to the police for further investigation.
PIMS spokesman Waseem Khawaja said that samples of Golovnina’s brain, heart and neck have been sent to a forensic laboratory for a complete report on the cause of death.
The Reuters journalist was found dead at her office in the capital’s F-8 sector on Monday. She was reportedly lying on the floor covered in vomit.
A Reuters’ statement said she fell unconscious in her office and was rushed to a private hospital. But “medical teams were unable to save” the Russian national journalist.
However, capital police, quoting her colleagues, said that alarmed at her long disappearance from her seat, the colleagues went looking for her and found her lying in a washroom of the office. The bureau chief was rushed to PIMS where she was pronounced dead.
Golovnina had been working as the Reuters bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan for the past year and a half.
She joined Reuters in Tokyo in 2001 and subsequently worked in postings around the world including London, Singapore, Moscow, Afghanistan and Iraq.