KUPWARA: (Azadi Times) The brutal father of an 8-year-old girl was arrested in the brutal murder of an 8-year-old girl in Zab Kharhama, Lulab, District Kupwara on March 29.
Iqbal Khatana, a sumo driver, strangled his daughter for money and then bit her neck. Explaining the sequence of events, SSP Kupwara Yugal Minhas said while talking to sources and media representatives that Muhammad Iqbal Khatana’s relationship with his wife Nagina Begum was strained for the past year and they often quarreled.
On the day of the incident, Khatana, a sumo driver by profession, had a heated argument with his wife in the morning. After returning from work in the evening, he took a kitchen knife with him with the intention of committing suicide,” he said.
He said, “15 minutes before Iftar, when the accused was leaving the house on the pretext of getting the tire puncture fixed, his daughter Uzma asked him for Rs. 5. Khatana gave her an Rs. 10 currency note.” His wife followed him to the courtyard. However, Uzma followed her father to the main road.”
After which she disappeared from their sight. Relatives were of the opinion that Uzma went with her father.
Iqbal took his daughter with him in his Sumo vehicle bearing number JK09/4208 and reached the Kharahama bus stand where he met Isha. Khatana put Uzma in his car and drove around for over an hour, waiting for the streets to be quiet so he could kill himself.
” When people left for Taraweeh. , so he diverted his car to a transformer in Heer Kharhama, where he stopped the car. There, in a state of mental distress due to domestic issues with his wife, he strangled Uzma for about two to three minutes, resulting in her daughter’s death on the spot due to suffocation.
The accused then left for his home. and took his daughter’s body to a place next to the wooden shed of his uncle’s house.
“He placed the body in the shed in a supine position (chest side up) and then, her throat was cut,” the officer said cut with a knife so that the blame would fall on the residents of the adjoining houses,” Iqbal, in his confession, also admitted that the knife was not very sharp and that his hands were shaking due to fear.
When he started to stab her with the knife at his throat, he slipped down and cut below the throat mark, bleeding and splattering his hands, arms, and lower legs. He was crouched with his hands and legs near the body.
Iqbal left the crime scene, cleaned the knife and his hands in a bathroom, and then proceeded to the car after which the car was driven as usual. When the family members did not see Uzma with them, they panicked and panic spread throughout the village.
Along with this, he went to the Kharhama police station in his car to file a missing report of Uzma. According to the police, when the body was recovered from a shed, the police immediately started an investigation and after the investigation was completed, Iqbal was taken into custody. In this regard, case number 28/2023US302IPC has been registered.
