rom outside the gate, the ’alam is the first thing one notices about Sania Zehra’s house. When I asked her mother, Hina Zehra Kazmi, if I could take a picture of it, she struggled to hold back her tears. “Sania longed for this corner of the house,” she said, “This was the place that had always felt like hers. But she was not ‘allowed’ [by her husband] to visit us.”

She looked down at her hands. “I don’t even have her pictures, not a single one. Not even the one that went viral on social media. I just could not keep them,” she said. In that moment, Hussain Abbas, the younger of Sania Zehra’s two sons, woke up from his sleep. Hina lifted him onto her lap and gently soothed him.

On November 18, at 3:00 pm, nearly 300 people had stood outside the District and Sessions Court in Multan, anxiously awaiting the verdict. There was fear and uncertainty. The hours dragged on. Finally, at 9:10 pm, the verdict was announced.

In a one-page order, Additional Sessions Judge Mohsin Ali Khan held Syed Muhammad Ali Raza guilty of the murder of Sania Zehra and sentenced him to death under Section 302(b) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

“When the verdict came, we did not know whether to cry or be relieved,” Hina said. “All I knew was that now we would go and have the word ‘martyr’ engraved on Sania’s epitaph.”

The court also sentenced Sania Zehra’s mother-in-law, Azra Parveen and brother-in-law, Ali Haider, to life imprisonment and imposed a Rs 500,000 fine on each. Three other accused in the case were acquitted.

“People expected us to be happy. They said things like ‘happiness will now return to Asad Shah’s home’ and ‘there will be celebration.’ They had no idea what we were going through.

“When the verdict came, we did not know whether to cry or be relieved,” Hina said. “All I knew was that we would now go and have the word ‘martyr’ engraved on Sania’s epitaph.”

The girl who once brought colour, love and joy into everyone’s life was fading. There were witnesses, but they claim that they had no option but to watch her slowly lose herself in an abusive marriage.

Sania Zehra, a mother of two and five months pregnant, was initially thought to have died by suicide. The body was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her room on July 9, 2024. As investigations progressed, it became clear that her death was a homicide being framed as a suicide.

“We’re not the sort of family that would force our daughter to stay in an abusive marriage. We tried to persuade her to leave him and return to us. However, she was determined to save her marriage,” says Sania’s mother.

Sania was 16 years old and had just completed her matriculation when her parents arranged her marriage to Ali Raza. Psychological abuse, allegedly, began within six months of marriage. Over time, Sania and her family discovered that Ali Raza had been married before and had two daughters. This information had been withheld from them. In 2020, he married a third time. Through it all, she held onto hope that things would get better.

“I used to watch her body language. I warned her, ‘Sania, this man will kill you. Leave everything and come back to us.’ My daughter would go silent. The sparkle in her eyes, the liveliness she once had about her, was fading. We were reduced to silent witnesses. She never said a word out loud.”

Hina said that she was never comfortable leaving her daughter in that home because she could see what her daughter was going through. She said she felt helpless, as Sania insisted that her parents stay out of her marriage.

One night, almost a year before she was murdered, something changed. That night, Sania called home and said that her husband had been subjecting her to torture and abuse. Her parents said they rushed to her house and at the gate for hours. Sania told them to leave. She said that the matter had been “resolved.”

Sania’s parents said that they had wanted to bring their daughter back home but were forced into silence by her. Sania, they said, requested that her family not interfere in her marriage. They, too, held on to the hope that somehow things would get better.

“We tried speaking to Ali Raza and his family. My heart was never at peace,” her mother said. “I knew they wanted something from our daughter, knowing that there was property in her name.”

She added, “They were getting everything anyway. She kept giving up whatever she had to save her marriage. Still, she was killed.”

Hina said by the time Sania was murdered, she was 20 years old. She had given up everything, from her education to her parents, believing that the sacrifice would bring peace to her marriage.

She said Sania had been her father’s favourite child. “Within our means, we tried our best to fulfill her wishes,” she said.

The girl who once brought colour, love and joy into everyone’s life was fading. There were witnesses, but they claim that they had no option but to watch her lose herself in the bonds of an abusive marriage.

The day the story broke, social media was flooded with calls for justice for Sania Zehra. While many lent support, others raised the question: why had Sania’s parents not stayed in closer touch with her?

Sania’s mother said her husband had made her cut her family off. “People assume that girls suffer because their parents do not support them,” she said. “We supported Sania to the hilt. But what can parents do when their daughter isn’t ready to walk away from her abusive marriage?”

Sania was 16 years old and had just completed her matriculation when her parents arranged her marriage to Ali Raza. Psychological abuse, allegedly, began within six months of marriage.

Sania’s mother said that her daughter pulled away from her, because every time they talked, she tried to show Sania the reality of her situation. “I kept begging her,” she said. “I said, ‘Leave everything. Leave us, leave your marriage, just think about yourself for once.’ It was all in vain.”

“The morning we received the call, I stepped into Sania’s room,” Sania’s sister Zainab recalled. “For a moment, I couldn’t even recognise the place. Then I saw her, her tangled hair, her baby bump and bruises all over her body. I couldn’t believe it was really her. She had been so beautiful, but, that day, I could hardly recognise her,” she said. “Her condition was such that we couldn’t even show people her face at the funeral.”

“When the verdict came,” Sania’s mother said, “I felt that my daughter herself had pleaded her case. Many people were exposed. All that happened because of that photo of Sania hanging [taken after her death],” said Hina. “That picture spoke louder than any of us could,” she said.

The writer is a freelance multimedia journalist in Multan