US official firing case: Victim’s widow commits suicide

ISLAMABAD - The widow of a Pakistani, who was one of the two people shot dead by US official Raymond Davis in Lahore, committed suicide Sunday, alleging that the authorities are trying to protect her husband’s killer.

Shumaila, widow of Muhammad Faheem, died at a hospital in Faisalabad district in Punjab province where she was under treatment after taking poisonous pills, Dunya TV reported.

“Doctors are reluctant to hand over her body to us to avoid protests,” a relative was quoted as saying by the channel.

Davis was arrested after he shot dead two people riding on a motorbike at a busy intersection in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province, Jan 27. He has been under investigation since then and has claimed that he acted in self-defence.

He has claimed that the two alleged assailants wanted to rob him. The US embassy in Islamabad has demanded diplomatic immunity, which has so far been denied by the government.

“I suspect that the authorities are trying to bail out Raymond Davis and I can’t tolerate this,” Shumaila said in the hospital while talking to reporters before her condition deteriorated.

She demanded that Davis be hanged to death at the same cross-section where he killed her husband, the channel said.

Shumaila, who married Faheem just six months ago, was disturbed after her husband died in a tragic manner, the report said.

“The reports that some back-channel efforts were underway to secure release of Davis forced her to register her protest by committing suicide,” family sources were quoted as saying.

Federal and Punjab governments have shown enough resilience to make it clear that Davis will be tried under the local laws despite considerable pressure by the US administration seeking his release on diplomatic grounds.