Sonia Bibi, 20, dies from injuries after telling police former lover doused her with petrol and set her alight

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A Pakistani woman has died after a rejected suitor set her on fire for refusing his marriage proposal, a doctor said.

Sonia Bibi, 20, was admitted to hospital last month, where she told police that her former lover Latif Ahmed had doused her with petrol and set her alight after she rejected him.

Medical staff initially said she would recover, but a doctor in Multan’s Nishtar hospital said infection set in and she died on Tuesday morning.

Forty-five to 50% of her body had been burned in the attack, Naheed Chaudhry, the head of the hospital’s burns department, told AFP.

The incident took place in a remote village of Multan district in central Punjab province. Police have arrested the 24-year-old suspect.

Bibi had told police that she had fallen out of love with Ahmed, and preliminary investigations suggested he had set her on fire after she refused to marry him.

Hundreds of women are murdered in Pakistan each year in cases of domestic violence or on the grounds of defending family “honour”.

The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women in Pakistan’s conservative and patriarchal society, claims that more than 3,000 women have been killed in such attacks since 2008.