Pakistani parents who were convicted of killing their daughter for refusing marriage in Italy were sentenced to life in prison. According to foreign media outlets, the court in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia on Tuesday sentenced a Pakistani couple to life imprisonment for the murder of their 18-year-old daughter.
The parents of Saima Abbas, Shabir Abbas and the absconding suspect Nazia Shahid, wanted to marry her off in Pakistan, but Saima had refused, which led to her disappearance in April 2021. Later, in November 2022, Saima Abbas’s body was found near her parents’ farmhouse in northern Italy.
Shabir Abbas was arrested in a village in Punjab in November last year on suspicion of his daughter’s murder, and was extradited to Italy on September 1, 2023.
According to reports, Saima’s parents were displeased that she was in love with a boy in Italy. Saima had informed the police against her parents, after which she was placed in a shelter home in November 2020.
In April 2021, she went to meet her family to inform them of her decision to start a new life with her boyfriend, after which she suddenly disappeared. The police raided her house on the information of her boyfriend, but her parents had already fled to Pakistan.
A year after her disappearance, human remains were found near Saima Abbas’s family home in Novellara, which were identified as Saima Abbas’s. The clothes on the body were the same that Saima Abbas had worn at the time of her disappearance.
According to CCTV footage, five members of the girl’s family were seen leaving the house, and they returned home after about three hours.
The court ruled that the parents had planned to kill their daughter, and the uncle had strangled his niece. Before this, Saima Abbas’s uncle, Danish Hussain, had been sentenced to fourteen years in prison for his involvement in the murder.
It was a tragic end to to the story of a young girl who wanted to make her own choices in life.