Zohra Shah () was an eight-year-old
Pakistani domestic slave of a married couple, Hassan Siddiqui and Umme Kulsoom.
She was tortured and killed for mistakenly releasing her masters’ parrots in
Bahria Town, Rawalpindi on 1 June 2020.
Her death caused an outcry in Pakistan and led to legislative changes which outlawed child domestic labour in the country.
Early life
She was from Basti Maso Shah in
Muzaffargarh District
Muzaffargarh District ( ur, ) is a district of the Punjab province of Pakistan. Its capital is Muzaffargarh city. It lies on the bank of the Chenab River.
Administration
The district is administratively divided into the following three teh ...
of southern
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
approximately from the capital,
Islamabad
Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital T ...
.
Murder
Allegedly, she was
murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...
ed for releasing valuable parrots from their cages.
Evidence such as 'older scars and marks'
suggest Shah had been repeatedly abused while working for Siddiqui and Kulsoom, and 'wounds on her thighs' were 'consistent with
sexual assault
Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...
'.
Aftermath
Siddiqui and Kulsoom were arrested and put on judicial
remand.
See also
*
Murder of Danielle Jones
The murder of Danielle Jones (16 October 1985 – c. 18 June 2001) was an English murder case Murder conviction without a body, where no body was found and the conviction relied upon forensic linguistics, forensic authorship analysis of text m ...
*
Murder of Tia Rigg
References
2020 murders in Pakistan
2020 deaths
2020 in Punjab, Pakistan
21st century in Rawalpindi
Child sexual abuse in Pakistan
Crime in Rawalpindi
Deaths by person in Pakistan
Incidents of violence against women
June 2020 crimes in Asia
June 2020 events in Pakistan
Slavery in Pakistan
Torture in Pakistan
Incidents of violence against girls
Violence against women in Pakistan
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