BAHAWALPUR:
A horrific case of gross desecration has rocked Bahawalpur after the body of a 16-year-old girl was exhumed and desecrated in suburban Inayati area.
Police said the main suspect, a self-proclaimed black magic practitioner, was later killed during a police encounter, while his accomplices remain at large.
The victim, Ramsha Bibi, died after suffering an electric shock and was buried in a local cemetery on Sunday night. However, when his family visited the grave the next morning, they found the soil removed and the body missing.
The family alerted the Inayati police, who cordoned off the area and launched a search.
A police team later recovered the body in nearby agricultural fields and confirmed that the grave had been dug overnight. Deputy sub-inspector of district police Muhammad Kashif said an autopsy was conducted and evidence of gross desecration was found, prompting registration of a criminal case.
During the investigation, police identified Abdul Waheed, also known as Kala, a local resident known for claiming to practice black magic, as the main suspect. He was believed to have exhumed the body for occult-related purposes before dumping it in nearby fields.
Police said after identifying Waheed and his accomplices, a raid was carried out to arrest them. However, the suspects opened fire on the police procession, forcing the officers to take defensive positions. During the exchange of fire, Waheed was seriously injured, apparently by bullets fired by his own associates as he attempted to flee.
Rescue 1122 rushed him to the hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead. The remaining suspects managed to escape under the cover of darkness and search operations are underway to arrest them.
The incident has renewed public concern over a disturbing trend of serious desecrations in different parts of the country. In the past two years, at least a dozen similar cases have been reported across the country. In 2024, a man in Karachi’s Korangi area was arrested and confessed to exhuming and abusing four female bodies. In separate incidents in Rawalpindi and Lahore, the bodies of five children were found removed from graves and left exposed.
In 2025, a group of 12 people exhumed a body in the Dhamial area of Rawalpindi to relocate it and build a shrine.
Legal expert Muhammad Furqan Abdullah told The Express PAkGazette that successive federal governments have attempted to strengthen laws against such crimes since 2011.
He said a proposed Section 297-A under the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024 aims to increase penalties for exhumation and desecration of dead bodies and should be enacted without delay to serve as an effective deterrent.
In early March 2022, a court petition was filed in the Lahore High Court to stop necrophilia through strict laws and policies.
Syeda Izzat Fatima, a lawyer, argued in her petition that there had been numerous incidents, reported and unreported, in Pakistan in which people had been caught sexually abusing dead bodies, but that there were no specific laws to charge the culprits.
He cited an incident in which Mohammad Riyaz was accused of sexually abusing 48 dead bodies in northern Karachi’s Nazimabad town.
The petitioner claimed that Article 37 of the Constitution, which deals with “Promotion of social justice and eradication of social evils”, covered the act of necrophilia, which was a social evil not only towards the deceased but also towards their families. He said many families were reluctant to bury their female members in graveyards and mostly continued to protect the graves for months fearing that the deceased might also become a victim of the heinous act.
