KARACHI: The children of Faryal Ashraf, who was stabbed to death allegedly by her husband, Waseem, some three-and-a-half years ago, evoked emotions like pity, sympathy and love, all at once in everyone’s heart at the Karachi Press Club on December 11.
The children were brought there by their maternal grandfather, Mohammed Ashraf, for a press conference organised by Aurat March, along with his son and daughter, to share with the media the family’s plight as they ask for justice from the court of law.
“My daughter was murdered at home in 2022 and her case is still pending in court,” said Ashraf. “Other than us testifying, there has been no progress in the case. We keep coming to Karachi from Mirpurkhas for each and every hearing in the hope of some development but there is no headway,” he added.
“I realised quite early after getting my daughter married to Waseem that I had made a mistake. At the time, I was living in Karachi though later I moved to Mirpurkhas. We had been told that he had a clothing business in Dubai, which turned out to be false. Still, I tried to set up several businesses for him, which failed as he just didn’t want to work. My daughter didn’t have money for food so I started helping her out financially. But Waseem would take away the money from her and blow it away. She didn’t even have a phone so I started sending Rs1,000 a day to a neighbour through ‘easypaisa’ to pass on to my daughter for groceries,” the father said.
He said that despite the help and support, Waseem ill-treated Faryal. He demanded a rickshaw and he was provided the same. But he sold it off. Then he demanded a new car from his father-in-law. “While I was trying to make arrangements for money to buy him a car, things became very bad for my daughter. He started beating her up and even threatened to kill her,” the father said, adding that so many times he tried talking his daughter into leaving her husband. “Once she did leave him for some days to stay with me but he did not let her take the children and she went back to him for them. Their children, two daughters and a son, were also being terribly neglected. He had not admitted any of them to school,” he said.
Talking about his daughter’s murder, Mohammed Ashraf said the couple’s oldest daughter, then 10 years old, Dua Fatima, was an eyewitness to the murder.
Dua, who was present at the press conference with her younger sister Imaan Fatima and five-year-old brother Abdul Hannan, is 13 years old now. She told the media that after her father stabbed her mother some nine times, she begged him to take their mother to hospital. “He said fine and went outside to his motorcycle but there he realised he did not have his keys so came back inside to find our mother struggling to get up as she vomited blood. He went to her and kicked her so hard then that she fell down again. She did not move after that,” young Dua narrated.
She said their father escaped to Hyderabad with them to stay with some relatives. But all their father’s relatives did not like him. One of them informed the grandfather about their whereabouts.
“I had by then got the police to file an FIR with much difficulty. When I provided the police the latest information of his whereabouts, they took their own sweet time coming into action. When I saw the children, they were in such a bad shape that I could not even recognise them at first,” said the grandfather.
“Dua is a witness to the murder, her father’s brothers and sisters, too, saw everything but the cold blooded murder case is not progressing in court. Justice delayed is justice denied, so they say,” Mohammed Ashraf concluded sadly.
Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2025.