Afghan Kin Are Accused of Killing Woman for Not Bearing a SonKABUL, Afghanistan — The young Afghan woman gave birth to a third girl three months ago — to a husband, the authorities say, who had been demanding a boy.
Last week, the man and his mother, in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, put a rope around the woman’s neck and strangled her, the police said.
The body of the woman, known only as Storai, 22, was found by the police a few hours later in her room, and she was buried a day later, on Jan. 26.
Storai’s death was a chilling reminder of the low status of women in Afghanistan.
Also unsettling was the revelation that the husband, identified as Sher Mohammad, 30, was suspected of being a member of a local militia that, the police and government officials said, has proliferated in the region and stoked lawlessness and violence, including in the home.
According to the police, Storai was married four years ago, when she was 18, and had two other girls: a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old.
But in the months after the birth of Storai’s third daughter, her husband and mother-in-law nagged her and argued with her about having borne yet another girl, said Nadera Geya, head of the Directorate of Women’s Affairs in Kunduz.
After Storai’s death, in Mafali, a village in the Khanabad District in southeast Kunduz, the mother-in-law put a rope in the window of her daughter-in-law’s room to give the impression that she had killed herself, Ms. Geya said. But there were signs of torture that led to suspicions that Storai had been killed, Ms. Geya said.
“Her mother-in-law strangled her with a rope and said she committed suicide herself, which is not true,” she said. “They killed her because they did not want her to bear any more girls. They had disputes with her even before this.”
Sayed Sarwar Hussaini, a spokesman for the Kunduz chief of police, said that the mother-in-law, Wali Hazrata, had been arrested but that Mr. Mohammad, the husband, had fled.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/world/asia/afghan-kin-accused-of-killing-woman-who-failed-to-have-son.html
