Minister’s murderer believes women can’t rule over men

[Goodperson]

Minister’s murderer believes women can’t rule over men

* Sarwar says he believed Zil-e-Huma was spreading evil influence on other women
* Zil-e-Huma’s funeral held at Gujranwala

Staff Report

LAHORE: Muhammad Sarwar, the killer of Punjab minister Zil-e-Huma, believes that women cannot rule over men and he shot the young woman minister due to her increasing popularity among the people, sources in the Punjab Police told Daily Times on Wednesday.

The sources said that Sarwar belonged to the Ahle Hadith sect and had “his own interpretation of Islam”.

Sarwar told interrogators he was fired by a passion to purge society of women who defy Islamic customs, police sources told AFP. “I have no regrets. I killed her out of the conviction that she was leading an un-Islamic life and spreading an evil influence on other women,” Sarwar told interrogators in custody, according to a police source.

The sources said that Sarwar owned a hardware shop in Gujranwala and has nine children – four sons and five daughters. They said that Sarwar had ordered his wife and daughters to stay at home and veil their faces. They added that Sarwar was previously arrested in 2002 for murdering four prostitutes, but had been acquitted due to lack of evidence.

Punjab Law Minister Basharat Raja has directed the prosecution secretary and the prosecutor general to assign a special prosecutor with the police team investigating Huma’s muder for technical assistance.

Raja said that a joint investigation team of the Intelligence Bureau and Crime Investigation Department led by the Gujranwala Investigation SP was interrogating Sarwar, adding that the challan of the case would be submitted to an anti-terrorism court for hearing and the court would be requested to hear the case on a daily basis so that the murderer is punished as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Zil-e-Huma’s funeral was held at Rahwali Cantt on Wednesday afternoon.

Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi termed Huma’s killing an irreparable loss to the Pakistan Muslim League. He lauded Huma’s services for people’s welfare and said that her efforts for women’s emancipation would always be remembered.

Punjab Governor Lt Gen (r) Khalid Maqbool, Gujranwala Corps Commander Lt Gen Anees Abbasi, Punjab Assembly Speaker Afzal Sahi, Law Minister Basharat Raja and several cabinet members attended Huma’s funeral.

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\02\22\story_22-2-2007_pg7_21

 

[A.Rahman]

The guy is mental patient, he has killed women in past too.

According to DPO Gujaranwala, Ghulam Sarwar had killed 12 call girls of Lahore. He was arrested for the murder of call girls and was released from the jail last year.

 

[niaz]

For the benefit of the forum members a link to the editorial in todays Dawn is noted below.


http://www.dawn.com/2007/02/22/ed.htm#1

It is a great tragedy that Pakistan society is diving into an abyss with no bottom. Who is to balme???.

True the decline started under the Zia, but even very educated and influential people appear to be resissting any change in laws to reform the ills. This was evident from 46 politicians of the Muslim League ( Q) absenting themslves on the day of voting and Muslim League ( N) voting against any ammendments in the Hudood laws. Earlier a bill by Sherry Rahman of PPP was voted out by the Muslim Leagures.

Without sounding like a prophet of doom; a country where young men keep blowing themselves up hoping it guarantees a place in paradise, where a self appointed guardian of religion cuts down a women in the prime of her life, a doctor is gunned down for dispensing anti polio drops and MNA's (MMA) stage a walk out potesting against inclusion of pre Islamic history of Pakistan in the history textbooks is indicative of a malaise in the fabric of the society which has no cure.

This is not a question or religion. Most North African and Far Eastern Islamic
countries even UAE are free from such biogtry.

I wish I knew the answer, perhaps a "Saffalk Masiha" or cruel dictator such as AtaTurk is urgently required else Pakistan will be no place for a sane man to live. On the other hand, murder of the women minister has depressed me so much that I am turning into a pessimist.

 

[Adux]

Why was he allowed out after 12 murders before, Just cuz he killed call girls, doesnt make it right!!!! They are humans too. Freaks like these, Should not be given capital punishment, its easy death for them, torture them to their grave for years and years to come

 

[Cheetah786]

Why was he allowed out after 12 murders before, Just cuz he killed call girls, doesnt make it right!!!! They are humans too. Freaks like these, Should not be given capital punishment, its easy death for them, torture them to their grave for years and years to come

A ‘religious fanatic’ murdered Punjab’s welfare minister, Zille Huma Usman, in broad daylight Tuesday as she was about to address an open session of her ‘meet-the-people’ pre-election routine at the Muslim League House in Gujranwala. The killer was Maulvi Sarwar and the press has tried to play down his heinous crime by calling him an ‘Islamist’.

In fact, the man is a stereotypical follower of the religious parties. He has serial-killed women in the past but was prevented from being punished by his powerful religio-political patrons. The fact also is that by Gujranwala standards, he was no fanatic, just a product of Gujranwala where the religious parties are strong and the city has contributed the largest number of youthful ‘martyrs’ to the earlier state-run jihad in Kashmir.

Maulvi Sarwar is supposed to have disapproved of women in public life. But this was not sticky personal matter. He was simply following the MMA manifesto against the inclusion of women’s special seats in the assemblies. (The deceased minister was inducted on one of these seats by the ruling party.)

If the religious alliance is not worried about the consequences of its ‘Islamic’ teachings, the rest of the nation should certainly be, because it gives the largest number of votes to a woman called Benazir Bhutto.

Minister Zille Huma Usman was only 37 and was dreaming of a life of freedom for the daughters of Gujranwala. She had organised the ‘marathon’ for them in 2005 in Gujranwala which was attacked by the local seminary aligned to the MMA. Unfortunately, far from challenging the seminary at the time and siding with Ms Huma, the provincial government had kowtowed and called off all ‘mixed marathons’ in the province which finally meant that girls stayed indoors.

The minister had received death threats for several months. Most probably they came after it was heard that she was planning another marathon for Gujranwala girls. Who were the people behind these threats? They were the same people who repeatedly saved the serial killer Maulvi Sarwar from being tried and hanged because “he was following his Islamic conscience” and cleansing the city of sin.

Let us take a look at this Maulvi Sarwar. The man had earlier murdered seven women described in the press as ‘call girls’ in Gujranwala and Lahore. He was arrested once and confessed to killing the ‘sinful women’; he was let off after one year because of lack of evidence but, more accurately, because of religious support. His patrons, according to the police, had “paid off” the relatives of the killed and been reprieved under ‘Islamic’ laws. There is nothing new in this. Anybody who knows the decade of religious mayhem in Karachi knows how criminals are protected from punishment by powerful patrons.

If our universities had not already been ‘conquered’ by the religious parties they could have done a sociological profile of Gujranwala as a city without a soul and a dangerous tendency towards punishing all kinds of ‘entertainers’, often with death. No one could imagine a decade ago that Gujranwala would become so violently Islamist in the future. No doubt it was becoming a wayside city that was growing by accretion without an intellectual mooring, more or less like Faisalabad that began well under the British but declined spiritually afterwards.

After General Zia ul Haq’s Islamisation, Gujranwala began to produce jihadis and turned inward, scrutinising its citizens for moral backslidings. It first turned on the minorities and produced the famous Salamat Masih Case, accusing an under-age Christian child of insulting the Holy Prophet (PBUH). A religious party attacked him and his co-accused in Lahore when they were coming to attend the High Court, killing one. Salamat Masih had to be sent out of Pakistan to save his life.

The second famous Gujranwala case was about a hafiz of Quran and amateur doctor who accidentally dropped his copy of the Holy Quran in the fire and was reported over the loudspeaker by a local cleric. His neighbours came out and burnt him alive. The rural nature of the population was expressed in the way the citizens mistook the word atai (quack doctor) applied to the victim over the loudspeaker, for asai (Christian). In other words, in Gujranwala one doesn’t have to check the facts before killing a non-Muslim!

Meanwhile, because of the atmosphere of extremism created by the clergy, some citizens like Maulvi Sarwar took to killing women they suspected of fahashi. Maulvi Sarwar began killing women in 2002 after listening to the most powerful cleric of the city (who shall remain unnamed) calling down the wrath of God on the entertainers that performed in the seven theatres of Gujranwala. He was not the only one who was inspired. The city’s police and the magistracy equally took part in ‘acts of piety’ by arresting actresses from the city theatres. Only Maulvi Sarwar went further than that.

He turned a serial killer and first murdered two dancing girls of Gujranwala, but went scot-free because witnesses who had earlier deposed against him quickly recanted under threat or inducement. He was now wanted only in one case of injuring a dancing girl after an attempt to murder her. After that, he went around catching dancing girls outside cinema halls and theatres and hotels and shooting them to death. In each case he was let off because many powerful people seemed to actually enjoy or approve of what he was doing. The method was the same: witnesses either recanted or were made to recant.

The politicians did nothing in Lahore. In fact one not-very-reputable politician of Gujranwala whose newly elected son was given the portfolio of culture complained to the chief minister that culture was a morally incorrect portfolio as it was not allowed by Islam!
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20072\22\story_22-2-2007_pg3_1

 

[A.Rahman]

Actually this guy is criminal and is hiding behind the shield of religion, no where in Quran it says to kill a woman because she is leader.

 

[HASEEB66]

Why was he allowed out after 12 murders before, Just cuz he killed call girls, doesnt make it right!!!! They are humans too. Freaks like these, Should not be given capital punishment, its easy death for them, torture them to their grave for years and years to come

son of a *****...should be tortured and tortured for life...and forced to beg in streets...call girls are a billion times better than son of pig like him...brain filled with ****...the pakistan police may realise they need to take the murders of call girls seriously..last month there was serial killing of call girls in london...hasd it been a high class call girl in lahore or karachi he would have been hanged..