Murder of Shafilea Ahmed

Shafilea Ahmed born in 1986, was a British woman from Great Sankey,Warrington (a large town near the Mersey Estuary) who is believed to have been murdered, possibly by a member of her family in a Honour killing after she turned down a suitor for an Arranged Marriage (that police suspect may have been a forced marriage, however her parents were released without charge after briefly having been arrested along with five other members of her family from her Extended Family who police believed knew something about the killer(s) but weren't saying anything) on her while she was on a family holiday in Pakistan in early 2003. In an apparent suicide attempt, in desperation it was was reported she swallowed bleach causing internal damage so serious it required great medical attention over a period of time.

There was mass media coverage for her that touched many people over the nation that continued for many months.

There were several poems written by Miss Ahmed that interested the police in their investigations, reflecting the utter despair and emotional state she was in and saying that her life was hopeless and her family were ignoring her, and she run away from home several times in the past apparently due to tensions with her family.

A student who wanted to become a lawyer, she disappeared on September 11, 2003 and had been missing for a week before her teachers informed the police, subsequently there was a major campaign to urge people who had any information to come forward and actress Shobna Gulati was persuaded to front the media campaign speaking about Shafilea and reading some of her poems out on television, however her corpse was tragically found in February 2004 in the River Kent near Sedgwick near Kendal in the Lake District (70 miles away from Warrington) after heavy flooding in the area, police said it was hidden deliberately, jewellery found with the body was identified by her parents as hers; the body was such in a bad state a precise cause of death could not be determined by the coroner at Post Mortem leaving the Police to believe that it had probably been there since the day she disappeared or not long after. Her body was also found to have been dismembered. A femur was found and was hers. A 2nd post mortem was ordered, but nothing came of that either.

The investigation by Cheshire Constabulary into the murder of Miss Shafila Ahmed remains ongoing and after 3 years has not established who killed her.

References

• More background on the case/
• Coverage in The Asian News
• Memorial
• Parents deny involvement
• Parents considered suing Cheshire Police
• Times Article on arrests and release of Family Members

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