SC calls for gender-sensitive probes into domestic homicides

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court has called for a gender-sensitive approach to the investigation of domestic homicides and crimes against women, observing that the privacy of a matrimonial home must not become a shield behind which perpetrators can evade accountability.

A two-member bench comprising Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakkar and Justice Ishtiaq Ibrahim made the observations while dismissing the jail petition of Habib Ullah, convicted of murdering his wife, Aqeela Bibi, inside their Karachi home in September 2011.

The Court refused leave to appeal and upheld the life sentence awarded under Section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code, along with Rs500,000 compensation to the deceased’s legal heirs.

In its judgment, authored by Justice Kakkar, the Supreme Court described domestic violence, including the murder of a wife within her matrimonial home, as a “crime of difficult proof”,

The judgment held that although Pakistani law does not create an automatic presumption of guilt against a husband in matrimonial homicide cases, Article 122 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order places the burden of explaining facts especially within a person’s knowledge upon that person.

Where a wife suffers an unnatural death inside the matrimonial home, and the prosecution establishes foundational circumstances pointing towards the husband, his failure to provide a plausible explanation can become an important link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, the Court ruled.

The bench stressed, however, that the presumption of innocence and other safeguards available to an accused must not be abandoned.

The petitioner remained absconding for nearly seven years.

The court also expressed serious concern over the police investigation, noting that although the investigating officer recovered a blood-stained hammer and bedsheet, neither was produced before the trial court.

Calling this a “serious lapse”, the bench said domestic homicides are already difficult to prove, and negligent investigation further obstructs justice.

The Supreme Court directed provincial governments to ensure appropriate training of police officers to recognise and overcome gender and patriarchal biases. Law-enforcement agencies, it said, must adopt genuinely gender-sensitive investigative practices, properly identify and preserve evidence, and hold investigating officers accountable for lapses caused by negligence or a casual approach.