On Friday (9th August), Karachi Police arrested a 40-year-old man who ‘confessed’ to desecrating recently-buried graves and sexually abusing dead women at the Korangi graveyard in Karachi, ARY News reported citing police. For those unversed, committing sex with corpses is called necrophilia. According to the police, the accused confessed that he desecrated four graves of women and subjected their dead bodies to sexual abuse. The locals caught him desecrating the grave of a recently buried 55-year-old woman. They thrashed him before handing over to the Police.
Speaking to a TV channel, crime reporter Tahir Abbas identified the accused as Salman Waheed.
Police arrested a 40-year-old Muslim Man Muhammad Saleem and booked him on digging up the grave of a recently-buried woman and Raping with the corpse, in a graveyard in Karachi. https://t.co/0pUysfhRON pic.twitter.com/6Yp0U0msIu
— Faraz Pervaiz (@FarazPervaiz3) August 10, 2024
The Police added that the accused, who was arrested from Bagh Korangi Cemetery, confessed to the crime and revealed a shocking tale of sexual abuse and desecration of female graves. According to the Police, accused Saleem used to target fresh graves of women, exhume bodies, and commit sexual abuse.
In a statement, the Korangi police stated that the accused was arrested “on the rape charge” in the Bagh-i-Korangi graveyard.
Based on the complaint submitted by the son of the deceased woman, the Awami Colony police registered a case against the accused under sections 297 (trespassing on burial places, etc), 376 (punishment for rape) and 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
As per a person’s complaint stated in the FIR, he had buried his mother in the graveyard on Thursday evening. At around 10:30 pm, he learned that the accused desecrated the grave and molested the body. However, some of the locals caught him and thrashed him. They then handed him over to the local police. The FIR states that the accused was found using an emergency light to commit the heinous crime.
During interrogation, he told the police that he used to keep an eye on the burials of women, and during nights he dug up graves to commit the heinous crime against the dead.
Strikingly, the accused was arrested 8 years ago as well for committing similar crimes in a graveyard in Korangi. In 2016, he was apprehended by locals from a graveyard in Korangi No.01.
Meanwhile, Police Surgeon Summaiya Syed told Dawn that the accused was brought to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre for a medical examination. Additionally, the deceased victim’s body was exhumed and a post-mortem examination was conducted on the victim’s body. In Police oversight, DNA samples were also collected from the deceased woman’s son. The relatives of the deceased woman later re-buried her dead body.
Earlier on 22nd June, a shocking incident came to light from Lahore. Hours after the burial, the body of a three-month-old child went missing from the grave. The horrific incident occurred in Miani Sahib Graveyard, Lahore. The child’s father, Abdul Rahman found that the body of the child went missing from the grave the next day, finding the shroud outside. He then alerted the police.
Subsequently, the Police arrested three individuals, including a security guard, in connection with the offense. According to the FIR, the incident occurred on 23rd April this year.
It is pertinent to note that numerous cases of necrophilia have been reported from Pakistan.
Cases of necrophilia
In May 2022, some unknown men dug out the corpse of a teenage girl and raped it in the Chak Kamala village in Gujrat, Pakistan. The deputy secretary-general of the Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) had shared that 17 suspects were being interrogated in that case.
In August 2021, a case of necrophilia came to light from the Thatta district. Some unknown men had dug out the corpse of a freshly-buried 14-year-old girl who had died of natural causes. They raped the teenage girl’s corpse. The incident took place in Maulvi Ashraf Chandio village near coastal town Ghulamullah.
In December 2020, a teenage boy in Lahore confessed in police custody that he committed necrophilia after murdering his seven-year-old cousin at a village in Mohlanwal area and then dumped her body in a pond.
In 2019, OpIndia also reported about in similar crime wherein a group of unidentified men dug up the grave of a woman in a graveyard in Karachi’s Landhi Town area and raped the dead body.
A stomach turning case was reported in 2011. The North Nazimabad police station official informed that an arrested accused identified as Mohammad Riaz confessed to having defiled the corpses of 48 women in the Paposh Nagar graveyard in the last eight years.
Amid a major concern of necrophilia in Pakistan, a writ petition was filed in Lahore High Court to stop necrophilia through strict laws and policies. A lawyer named Syeda Izzat Fatima submitted in her petition that there had been numerous reported and unreported incidents in Pakistan where individuals had been caught molesting dead bodies but there were no specific laws to charge the culprits.
She had also cited the case of Mohammad Riyaz who was accused of molesting 48 bodies in Karachi’s North Nazimabad Town.
Incidentally, apart from Pakistan, an Afghan woman who came over to India had revealed that the Taliban commit the heinous act of indulging in sex with dead bodies. The woman, called Muskan by News18, worked in the police force in Afghanistan and came to India due to fear of the Taliban.
She revealed that the Taliban either picked up women or shot them. According to her, they want women from every family.
