Shocking details have emerged in a statement given to the police by the gravedigger of Chhati cemetery in the case of a married woman who was allegedly murdered over honour on the orders of a jirga in the Pirwadhai area of Rawalpindi.

Rashid Mahmood, the arrested gravedigger of Chhati cemetery, told the police that the girl was buried at 6.30am on July 17.

He added that the grave was prepared on the instructions of Gul Badshah, a member of the graveyard committee, who had asked him to prepare the grave within an hour.

According to Rashid Mahmood, the grave could not be prepared due to heavy rain and the unavailability of workers early in the morning.

At 5.45am, Gul Badshah came to the cemetery with 25 people, who dug and prepared the grave with me, Rashid added.

According to the gravedigger, the victim’s body was brought on a loader rickshaw, covered with a red tarpaulin.

The rickshaw remained parked in the cemetery until the grave was ready, after which the girl was buried.

According to the gravedigger, after the burial, the group levelled the grave and removed all signs of the grave.

Rashid Mahmood said he gave the grave receipt number 78 to Gul Badshah’s son, who wrote the girl’s name, Sidra Dukhtar Arab Gul, on it.

The gravedigger told the police that on July 18, the secretary of the cemetery committee, Saif-ur-Rehman, came to him and took the receipt book.

Later, the receipt book was returned, but the record for receipt number 78 was missing.

It should be noted that on the night between July 17 and 18, the married woman was allegedly strangled to death on the orders of a jirga in the limits of the Pirwadhai police station in Rawalpindi. She was later quietly buried, and all signs of her grave were erased.

Eight people have so far been arrested in the case, while the victim’s second husband, Usman, turned himself in to the police last night.

Muhammad Ilyas, the father of Usman, claimed that the girl’s family had taken her on the pretext of ‘rukhsati’, and two days later, they received information that the girl had been murdered.