Pakistani authorities have not yet made any contact with the police here in relation to the murder investigation of the British-Pakistani girl Samia Shahid in Jhelum, West Yorkshire Police reported. However, a request to assist the investigation will be ‘carefully considered’.
According to Samia’s forensic reports, she was suffocated to death and there were injury marks on her body.
Samia Shahid’s husband Syed Mukhtar Kazam believes that she was the victim of an ‘honour killing’ case because she had rebelled against wishes of the family, divorced her first husband Muhammad Shakeel and married him in Bradford in 2014.
Samia Shahid’s family insisted she died of natural causes and strongly denied any involvement in her death.
A West Yorkshire police spokesman told media, “We believe they are both in the UK, but this is a Pakistan Police investigation and all enquiries are being directed by the investigating force.”
He added that the West Yorkshire Police was “continuing to liaise with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office regarding their investigation”.
While talking to media, the police spokesman said that she never told the police about threats to her life.
The spokesman, however, said that “Samia was spoken to by officers after she was reported missing”. It is understood that Samia was reported missing by her family after she married Kazam and left for Dubai.
Bradford West Labour MP Naz Shah, who has campaigned for the case to be thoroughly investigated in Pakistan, said: “We’re actually very pleasantly surprised at the way the Pakistan authorities have responded to this and the urgency that they’ve placed on this investigation, which is quite impressive. The communication, to say we’re so far apart, has been pretty good.”
Samia Shahid, 28, a British national who had reportedly been visiting family in Pakistan last month, was found dead on July 20. Her family had claimed she had died of natural causes; however, her second husband Mukhtar Kazam denied the claims. He had maintained that Samia had been killed by her family for ‘honour’.
Investigations picked up momentum earlier in the week after her father Chaudhary Shahid was found to have omitted important information in his statement to the police.
