The local police of Uruzgan province reported the arrest of Ayesha’s father-in-law, Haji Suleman, over alleged incitation of his son to cut his wife’s (Ayesha) nose for putting to shame his family honor by trying to escape from her husband’s house.
Ayesha’s horrific nose-cut pictures made it to the world through the cover page of Times Magazine in the January of this year. She was later sponsored to travel to the US and get an artificial nose through a plastic surgery in one of California’s hospitals and is still receiving medical treatments for the same purpose.
Uruzgan Police Chief said, “We can confirm that we have arrested Haji Suleman, father of Ayesha’s husband in an operation from the Chora District of the province.”
Haji Suleman has so far rejected any allegations linking him to the horrific incident that left Ayesha without her nose and ears. He maintains that he’s innocent and that Ayesha’s father is accusing him of doing the wrong and that Ayesha’s father had recommended him to murder Ayesha for defaming the family by escaping from her husband’s house. On the other hand, rejecting such counter allegations, Ayesha’s father Muhammadzai maintains that he doesn’t trust the local government in properly handling the culprits and that he wants his daughter returned. He also holds that his daughter (Ayesha) has been kidnapped by foreigners and that he wants her back though he won’t be able to survive in Uruzgan thence, and that he will have to leave and settle somewhere else.
In the backdrop of the stories related to Ayesha’s nose cutting that circulated through New York Times and certain other media outlets as an act of the Taliban (who are notorious for such acts), Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission in Uruzgan has called any such reports linking the nose-cutting of Ayesha to Taliban as ‘false’. Talking to media men, the spokesperson for the Rights Watchdog said, “After a year of investigation, we have found that, contrary to the New York Times reports, Taliban weren’t responsible for this incident. It was simply a case of domestic violence and not of Taliban.”
Earlier it had been reported that the verdict was issued by a Taliban court that Ayesha’s nose and ears be chopped off by her husband. According to the new findings, Ayesha had been given in “BAD” as compensation for the murder (of someone by her father, or brother) and later due to unbearable torture by her husband she had tried to escape.
Violence against women is one of the most serious challenges in Afghan social life, which claims tens of lives every year with most women going for the self immolation.
Note: “BAD” is a local term which refers to a tribal custom in which the family of the murderer has to give in compensation a daughter in marriage to a member of the family of the murdered to settle the issue and end the attempts for revenge i.e., an eye for an eye.
