The local policeman who first investigated the suspected “honour” killing of a British woman in Pakistan has been arrested on suspicion of suppressing evidence and allowing key suspects to flee the country.



Abubakar Khuda Bakhsh, the head of a special team set up to investigate the death of Bradford-born Samia Shahid, said Aqeel Abbas, the station house officer of Mangla police station, was detained on “hard evidence of obstructing justice”. “He helped people escape the country who were wanted in the case of Samia,” he said. “Despite clear instructions, he let them go.”

The police are seeking the return of Shahid’s mother and sister to Pakistan for questioning. Bakhsh said his report alleges that Shahid was first raped by her former husband Chaudhry Shakeel and then strangled to death with the assistance of her father Muhammad Shahid on 20 July.

Several family members are accused of conspiring to trick Shahid into travelling to Pandori, their ancestral village in Punjab province, on the pretext that her father was gravely ill. It is alleged that the family felt that Bradford-born Shahid had flouted the patriarchal culture and religious mores of small-town Punjab.

Not only did she divorce Shakeel, a cousin she had been pressured into marrying, but she proceeded to marry Mukhtar Syed Kazam, a man who belonged to both a different clan and, as a Shia, a different Islamic sect. Kazam, fearing for her safety, had begged her not to travel from their home in Dubai to Pakistan, but she went on 14 July.

Both Shakeel and Muhammad Shahid are currently being held on judicial remand and are likely to be formally charged at their next court hearing on September 8.

In a country where a huge number of “honour” killings are thought to go unreported or unpunished, Shahid’s case is unusual for attracting high-powered scrutiny. A special investigation team led by Bakhsh was set up by the chief minister of Punjab after Bradford MP Naz Shah raised her concerns with Pakistan’s prime minister.

Initially, local police had accepted the family’s claims that the healthy 28-year-old had died of unknown causes on the stairs of her former husband’s house in Pandori where her father, a Bradford businessman, holds influence.

Abbas, the station house officer, initially told the Guardian and other media that there were no signs of physical injury on Shahid’s body when it was discovered, but photos of her body and a leaked autopsy report later showed she was found with vivid bruising around her neck.

“From physical signs, it was clear she was strangled,” said Bakhsh. “A person like [Abbas], with 20 years’ service, must have known that. He was playing it down.”

Another police official said Abbas is also believed to have accepted a payment of 500,000 rupees (£3,600) from Shakeel and allowed him to leave. He later reappeared after acquiring “pre-arrest bail”, a legal move that hindered the police investigation. The inquiry team said they matched Shakeel’s DNA to semen collected from Shahid’s corpse, which suggested that she had been raped.

Although her family have refused to acknowledge her divorce from Shakeel in 2014, Bakhsh said his team were satisfied that she was legally separated under British law.