In February 2003 the police in Bahawalpur, in southern Punjab, announced that they had solved a run of killings that had alarmed the town of Ahmedpur East for more than a year. The man they presented was Abdul Razzaq, a mason from the town. The senior superintendent of police for Bahawalpur, Sikandar Hayat, told reporters that Razzaq had confessed to raping eight elderly women over the previous two years and strangling them when they resisted. Police called him a psychopath and an addict. He was sent for trial before the Anti-Terrorism Court in Bahawalpur.
The police gave their account of the case in the days after the arrest. It describes what the police said he told them, not what a court found. The killings attributed to him had not been tried by the end of February 2003, when the police were still preparing the charge sheet.
Ahmedpur East, also written Ahmadpur East, is a town in Bahawalpur district, in the south of Pakistan's Punjab province. By the autumn of 2002 the deaths of women in its suburbs had become a pattern that the local police could no longer treat as unrelated.
On November 20, 2002, Majeed Gill reported in Dawn that nine women had been killed in the suburbs of the town in about a year and that no one had been arrested. Four of the cases fell within the jurisdiction of the city police and the rest within that of the Saddar police. The women were between 40 and 60 years old. Four had been strangled; the others had been killed by other means. Nothing had been taken from them, and their jewelry was left with them.
The first deaths had not been treated as crimes at all. A body reported in December 2001 and another found on April 13, 2002, were recorded as accidental deaths. Several of the later cases were first entered by the police under Section 174, the provision used for such deaths, before murder cases were registered. Seven of the deaths came in October and November 2002.
The medical officer at the tehsil headquarters hospital in Ahmedpur East, who carried out the postmortem examinations, told Dawn that the killer had used the same method each time.
The November 2002 report named some of the women who had died in the area, but the police did not say, in February 2003, which deaths they attributed to Razzaq, and they did not name the eight women he was said to have confessed to killing.
The women's individual ages, beyond the range of 40 to 60, were not given, and little else about their lives was reported.
The police formed citizens' committees in the affected neighborhoods and questioned people living near the places where the women had been found. They offered a reward of 10,000 rupees for information leading to the killer.
Their best lead came from two women who had foiled an attempt by the suspect. The women were taken to Multan, where a sketch was prepared from what they told the police, and the district police released it in the days before the November report appeared.
For three more months no arrest followed. When the police later announced Razzaq's capture, the senior superintendent said that officers had spent several months looking for leads in the unsolved cases.
On the night of February 9, 2003, plainclothes police in Ahmedpur East arrested Razzaq after, they said, he attacked a woman in the town. The woman identified him at the tehsil headquarters hospital, according to the police account. The police announced the arrest five days later.
On February 14 Sikandar Hayat, the senior superintendent of police for Bahawalpur district, held a press conference. Dawn reported his account the next day under the headline "Police arrest 'rapist-killer'". The police said the man they had arrested had raped and killed eight elderly women in a village of Ahmedpur East over the previous two years.
According to the police, Razzaq confessed to raping eight women and strangling them when they resisted. He also said, the police reported, that he had committed similar crimes in other cities, which he did not name. He told them he was ready to face any punishment.
The police gave a short account of his life. He was a mason and the father of three daughters and a son. He had separated from his wife eight years earlier and had since been living with his sister in Ahmedpur East. He spoke Seraiki, claimed to belong to the Abbasi family, and knew some Arabic. He had worked in Karachi for a time. During Ramadan, the police said, he had gone to Multan and attacked women at shrines there. He had also stayed at the house of a lawyer in Lahore, where he taught the Quran to the lawyer's children. The police described him as an addict.
None of these details had been tested in court by February 2003. They are the police version of a confession given in custody, made public before any case had been registered.
Dawn reported on February 16, 2003, that Razzaq had been brought before a magistrate in Ahmedpur East on Saturday to record his statement, and that the proceedings were still under way when the report was filed. It also reported that, almost a week after the arrest, cases of rape and murder against him had not yet been registered. The city police expected to complete the legal formalities by the following Monday.
On February 26, 2003, Dawn reported from Bahawalpur that Razzaq, accused of raping and killing eight elderly women, would be tried before the Anti-Terrorism Court. The police were completing the legal formalities, and the challan, or charge sheet, was expected to be submitted to the court in Bahawalpur the following month.
By then he had been placed on judicial remand. A special police team led by the deputy superintendent of police for Ahmedpur East was questioning him. During that questioning, the police said, he named three shrines, in Multan, Lodhran and Makhdoom Rashid, where he said he had assaulted three other elderly women without killing them.
Several points in the public record do not fit together neatly.
The numbers differ. In November 2002 Dawn counted nine women killed in the suburbs of Ahmedpur East in about a year. In February 2003 the police spoke of eight women killed in a village of the town over two years. The reports do not say which of the women named in November 2002 the police connected to Razzaq, and none of the February 2003 reports named the eight women.
The descriptions of the deaths also differ. The postmortems described in November 2002 found that four of the women had been strangled and the others had been killed in another way. The police account of the confession in February 2003 spoke only of strangling.
His wider admissions were not borne out in the reports. The police said he had confessed to crimes in other cities and at three shrines, but no victims, dates or cases in those places were reported.
The outcome of the case was not reported by the end of February 2003. The charge sheet had not yet been filed, and the reports do not say which killings he would be tried for.
December 2001 to November 2002: Deaths of older women around Ahmedpur East, several first recorded as accidents, are later treated as killings (Dawn, November 2002).
November 2002: Police release a sketch of the suspect, prepared in Multan from the accounts of two women who escaped an attacker, and offer a reward of 10,000 rupees.
November 20, 2002: Dawn reports that nine women have been killed in the suburbs of Ahmedpur East in about a year and that no arrest has been made.
February 9, 2003: Plainclothes police arrest Abdul Razzaq in Ahmedpur East.
February 14, 2003: The senior superintendent of police for Bahawalpur announces the arrest and says Razzaq has confessed to raping and killing eight elderly women.
February 16, 2003: Dawn reports that Razzaq has been brought before a magistrate in Ahmedpur East to record his statement and that rape and murder cases have not yet been registered.
February 26, 2003: Police say he will be tried before the Anti-Terrorism Court in Bahawalpur and that the charge sheet is expected the following month.