SHAFILEA PARENTS GUILTY OF MURDER

SHAFILEA AHMED MURDER TRIAL
PARENTS GUILTY OF KILLING HER

www.bbc.co.uk - The parents of Shafilea Ahmed have been jailed for life after being convicted of her murder. The 17-year-old went missing from her home in Warrington, Cheshire, in 2003 and her body was found in the River Kent in Cumbria six months later. Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49, had denied her murder but the jury at Chester Crown Court returned guilty verdicts against them both. Mr Justice Roderick Evans said they would both serve a minimum of 25 years. The judge told them: "Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love of your child." The couple suffocated Shafilea with a plastic bag after years of abuse. 
After the trial, Det Supt Geraint Jones said "For me this is not an 'honour killing', it's a clear case of murder." The prosecution claimed she was murdered by her parents because they believed she brought shame on the family. Shafilea went missing on 11 September 2003 and was reported missing by a teacher - and not her parents - a week later.

After several police appeals to find her, workmen found her decomposed remains in February 2004 and she was identified by her dental records and jewellery. Two post-mortem examinations failed to determine how she died but a verdict of unlawful killing was recorded at her inquest in 2008. The breakthrough came when Shafilea's younger sister, Alesha Ahmed, was arrested in connection with an armed robbery at the family home in August 2010. It was in a police interview that she said she had seen her parents kill her sister seven years earlier. During the trial, she told the court her parents pushed Shafilea on to the settee in their house and she heard her mother say "just finish it here". She said the parents then forced a plastic bag into the teenager's mouth and killed her in front of their other children. 
During the trial, Alesha Ahmed had told the court how her parents repeatedly attacked and abused Shafilea. She said Shafilea was torn between the allure of a Western lifestyle and their demands she wear traditional clothes and agree to an arranged marriage.

Rows over Shafilea Ahmed's westernised ways came to a tragic end in 2003 when she was murdered by the people who were supposed to love her the most - her parents Iftikhar and Farzana Ahmed. So-called honour crimes, centring on notions of family shame and often perpetrated against young women, are very steeped in taboos of family and community, loyalty and fear. Women, kids and poor men should not be helpless, and God is not pleased with those caretakers who fail to protect them.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

“The brāhmanas, the cows and the defenseless creatures are My own body.” ... The defenseless creatures, according to Brahma-samhitā, are the cows, brāhmanas, women, children and old men. ... Just as children are taken care of by the parents, women as a class should be taken care of by the father, husband or grown-up son. Those who are helpless must be taken care of by their respective guardians; otherwise the guardians will be subjected to the punishment of Yamarāja, who is appointed by the Lord to supervise the activities of sinful living creatures. The assistants, or messengers, of Yamarāja are likened here to vultures, and those who do not execute their respective duties in protecting their wards are compared to serpents. Vultures deal very seriously with serpents, and similarly the messengers will deal very seriously with neglectful guardians.

Śrīla A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda :
“The Śrīmad Bhāgavatam” Canto 3 “El Status Quo”
Chapter 16: “The Two Doorkeepers of Vaikuntha, Jaya and Vijaya,
Cursed by the Sages” - Verse 10. - Bhaktivedanta VedaBase Network

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