Kasargod: Safiya Murder - Police Get Vital Clue on Modus Operandi
Daijiworld Media Network - Kasargod (SP)
Mangalore, Jul 12: The Kerala crime branch team, which has been investigating into the murder of housemaid, the 14-year-old Safiya, is yet to arrive at a conclusion on the purpose behind her murder. It has however, been treading meticulously on the path of finding out the reason, following the evidence they have been able to lay their hands on.
The sleuths are following up the clue that Safiya was pregnant when she was slain. They now suspect, that she died while an attempt was being made to abort her pregnancy.
During the course of examining the bones the team dug out from a site near Mollam check dam in Goa, they discovered that the abdomen of Safiya had been slit open. This has led the team to believe that the girl was in the family way at the time of her death. During the scientific examination too, tests conducted are learnt to have revealed that the girl was aged between 11 and 14 years and also that she was pregnant. The bones go through certain changes during pregnancies and these changes were evident in the skeletal remains of the murdered girl.
The team suspects that Safiya was forcibly administered medicines meant for abortion. Abortion did not occur after that and she was given another dose of medicines upon which she lost her consciousness. Hamza, growing panicky and wrongly concluding that the girl had died, cut her body into three pieces. Before disposing off the body, he must have slit open her abdomen in an attempt to remove the foetus, the team presumes.
The crime branch in the meantime has been making preparations to approach the court for taking Maimoona, wife of Hamza, into police custody for subjecting her to intensive interrogations. The crime branch thinks that this would bring out the real reason for Safiya's murder.
Crime branch superintendent of police S P Philip has since filed a report with the High Court, in response to a Habeous Corpus petition Safiya's mother Ayesha had filed there. The report contains the details of the investigations and that the girl had been murdered.
The team has found that the claim of Hamza that the girl sustained grievous burn injuries after boiling gruel fell on her, which caused her death, to be a concocted story. The tests conducted by Dr Sherley Vasu from Kozhikode Medical College and preliminary tests conducted by experts at Hyderabad have found that Hamza's version was a bundle of lies.