BAHAWALPUR:
A gruesome case of grave desecration has rocked Bahawalpur after the body of a 16-year-old girl was exhumed and desecrated in the suburban area of Inayati.
Police said the main suspect, a self-styled practitioner of black magic, was later killed during a police encounter, while his accomplices are at large.
The victim, Ramsha Bibi, had died after receiving an electric shock and was buried in a local graveyard on Sunday evening. But when her family visited the grave the following morning, they found the ground disturbed 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 from nearby agricultural fields, confirming that the grave had been dug up during the night. District police spokesman Assistant Sub-Inspector Muhammad Kashif said an autopsy was conducted and evidence of grave desecration was found, leading to the registration of a criminal case.
During the investigation, the police identified Abdul Waheed, also known as Kala, a local resident known for claiming to practice black magic, as the prime suspect. He was believed to have dug up the body for occult-related purposes before dumping it in nearby fields.
Police said that after identifying Waheed and his accomplices, a raid was conducted to arrest them. However, the suspects opened fire on the police party, forcing the officers to take defensive positions. During the exchange of fire, Waheed was critically injured, allegedly by bullets fired by his own associates as he tried to escape.
He was taken to the hospital by Rednings 1122, where the doctors pronounced him dead. The remaining suspects managed to escape under the cover of darkness and search operations are on to nab them.
The incident has renewed public concern over a disturbing trend of grave desecration in various parts of the country. Over the past two years, at least a dozen similar cases have been reported nationwide. In 2024, a man in Karachi’s Korangi area was arrested and confessed to exhuming and abusing four female corpses. In separate incidents in Rawalpindi and Lahore, bodies of five children were found removed from graves and left exposed.
In 2025, a group of 12 people dug up a body in Rawalpindi’s Dhamial area to move it for the construction of shrines.
Legal expert Muhammad Furqan Abdullah told The Express Pakinomist that successive federal governments have tried 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 the penalties for exhumation and desecration of corpses and must be enacted without delay to serve as an effective deterrent.
Earlier in March 2022, a petition was filed in the Lahore High Court to stop necrophilia through strict laws and policies.
Syeda Izzat Fatima, who is a lawyer, claimed in her petition that there had been numerous reported and unreported incidents in Pakistan where people had been caught attacking dead bodies, but there were no specific laws to charge the culprits.
She cited an incident where one Mohammad Riyaz was accused of molesting 48 bodies in Karachi’s North Nazimabad town.
The petitioner submitted that Article 37 of the Constitution which deals with “promotion of social justice and eradication of social evil” covered the act of necrophilia which was a social evil not only to the deceased but also to their families. She said many families were reluctant to bury their female members in cemeteries and mostly kept guarding the graves for months fearing that the deceased might also become a victim of the heinous act.
