A 22-year-old woman and her infant son died after falling from the eighth floor of a building in Delhi Colony area of Karachi on Wednesday, hospital officials said. The deceased were allegedly pushed from the balcony by the woman's mother-in-law, police said.

Frere police station SHO Rana Abdul Latif told Dawn that three-month-old Abdul Hadi died on the spot while his mother, Ramsha, 22, succumbed to her wounds during treatment at Jinnah Post-Graduate Medical Centre.

“It appears to be a double murder case of the mother and her infant son,” said Karachi South-SSP Sarfraz Nawaz Shaikh.

The senior officer said Ramsha and Rizwan Ahmed had married a year-and-half ago against the will of Ahmed’s parents, therefore she was not accepted by his family.

Initially, the couple moved to Dubai, but some six months back they had returned to Karachi and started living with Ahmed’s parents at the family’s apartment in Delhi Colony, where the incident happened.

Also read: When in-laws become outlaws

When Ramsha and her infant son fell from the eighth floor of the building some women gathered around them. There, the wounded woman told them that she was thrown from the balcony of the flat by her mother-in-law, police said.

Initially, SSP Shaikh said that police would lodge FIR into the double murder case "after getting a proper statement of the woman’s parents and witnesses.”

However, later in the day, Frere police registered the murder case on the complaint of the deceased woman’s father, Mohammed Khalid, and arrested the woman’s mother-in-law Nasrin Bibi and her brother-in-law Iqram over charges of involvement in the double murder, SHO Latif told Dawn.

The deadly incident, which was first portrayed as a case of suicide by the woman's in-laws, triggered fear in the densely-populated neighbourhood.