ISLAMABAD: A 45-year-old woman was found dead inside an apartment in Rawalpindi with her hands bound and a wire around her neck, police and her family said on Friday, in a case her relatives say followed a history of domestic abuse.
Hina Javed was found in the bathroom of a second-floor flat at Askari Apartments in Rawalpindi’s Lalkurti area on Thursday morning, according to a police complaint, formally known in Pakistan as a First Information Report (FIR).
The case came to light after the woman’s father-in-law called her brother, Fahad Javed Malik, early in the morning and told him there was an emergency, Malik said in the complaint.
He and other family members rushed to the apartment, where they found Javed dead.
“My sister, Hina Javed, was lying dead in the bathroom,” Malik told police, according to the complaint. “Both of her hands were tied behind her back with a piece of cloth, her mouth was gagged with cloth, a wire was tied around her neck, and a wire wrapped around her neck was tied to the bath shower. Foam and blood were coming out of her mouth.”
The family has accused Javed’s husband, Faisal Asghar Imam, his domestic worker, Zeeshan Arshad, and his father, Asghar Ali Fayyaz, of involvement in the killing. Javed married Imam in November 2025.
Speaking to Arab News, Malik said his sister had complained of abuse before her death.
“The couple has been going through such issues for some time after their marriage,” he said. “The victim has complained of repeated abuse in the past too.”
He said Javed worked for a semi-government organization, while her husband had at times been unemployed.
In the police complaint, Malik accused Imam of routinely subjecting his sister to severe physical and psychological abuse and alleged that Imam had also abused a previous wife.
“The motive behind the murder is that the accused, Faisal Asghar Imam, not only harassed and subjected my deceased sister Hina Javed to severe torture and beatings every day, but he had also subjected his previous wife to such abuse, forcing her to seek a divorce out of distress.”
Violence against women remains widespread in Pakistan and is not confined to poorer or less educated households.
One of the country’s most prominent cases was the 2021 murder of Noor Mukadam, the 27-year-old daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, at an upscale Islamabad home.
Mukadam’s killer, Zahir Jaffer, came from a wealthy and influential business family.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court upheld Jaffer’s death sentence in 2025 and rejected his review petition in June this year.
Police have registered Javed’s case under Sections 302 and 34 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which cover murder and criminal acts carried out by several people with a shared intention, and collected evidence from the apartment.
Javed’s body was taken to Benazir Bhutto Hospital for a post-mortem examination, while police said they were searching for the accused.
Civil Lines police station chief Asif Sajjad told Arab News the investigation was continuing and no arrests had yet been made.
He declined to comment further before the inquiry was completed.
