KARACHI: A woman on Friday confessed to have killed her 22-day-old daughter in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi after getting “upset” with her remaining awake till late, the police said. 
Saad Hussain, the woman’s husband, last week filed a complaint at the Liaquatabad police station, saying he was at work when he received a call from his wife informing him their newly born daughter, Zemal, was sick. When he reached home, he was informed that his daughter had been killed by an unknown person, he said. 
Hussain said his wife, Umaima, told him she heard some noise at the rooftop and went out of the room, where a man wearing a mask shoved her and she fell unconscious after her head hit the wall. Upon regaining consciousness, she saw her daughter’s throat had been slit with a sharp object, her husband told the police. 
“The mother has now confessed to killing her daughter,” Shehla Qureshi, a senior superintendent of police (SSP), told Arab News. 

The suspect has been arrested and the police have recovered the murder weapon — a multi-purpose knife tool. 
SSP Qureshi shared with Arab News a video that showed Umaima confessing to the murder. 
“I killed my daughter because we, husband and wife, got upset with quarrels [over her not sleeping at night],” she says in the video. 
“There used to be fights between me and my husband and we were unable to give each other time.” 
SSP Qureshi said the suspect told investigators her daughter would cry at nights and wouldn’t let her sleep due to which the couple would fight with each other. 
“She, in order to dodge the police, spread things inside the room to give the incident a color of robbery and pretended to have fallen unconscious,” the police officer said. 
The police report filed by Hussain on March 10 confirmed while things inside the room were scattered all over, none of the jewelry, mobile phone or cash was stolen. 
Hussain, however, could not say if his wife was involved in the murder of their daughter. Umaima’s conduct with their newborn was “quite normal,” he told Arab News. 
“It has been said by the police in their investigation, but I don’t know if she has murdered our daughter,” he said. “Zemal was our first child.” 
Earlier this month, a man who wanted a male child killed his infant daughter in Mianwali district of the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. 
The baby named Jannat, which means heaven in Urdu, was shot multiple times. The police told media the autopsy found that Jannat sustained five gunshots and was killed instantly. 
The police arrested the suspect on March 10. 
Gender-based violence is not uncommon in Pakistan where, according to some surveys, 70 to 90 percent women are subjected to domestic violence. 
Women are also killed by their male relatives in the name of family honor, and rights organizations have documented cases where young girls belonging to minority religious communities were married to Muslim men after forced conversions. 
Pakistan has tried to address the problem of violence against women by strengthening its legal framework in the past. 
Earlier this year, it enacted a law to protect women from workplace harassment, though legal experts maintain such measures are not always fully implemented.