Pakistani man kills wife, boils her body in cauldron in front of children

In a gruesome incident reported from Karachi, Pakistan, a man allegedly suffocated his wife to death before boiling her body in a cauldron. Ashiq Khan committed the crime in front of his six children in the kitchen of the private school where he used to work as a security guard.

The school, located in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area of the city, had been closed for almost nine months, according to police officials. Khan used to live in the servant quarters with his family.

He first suffocated his wife to death using a pillow and then put her body in a cauldron, Geo News reported citing a police officer. The incident came to light after his 15-year-old daughter reached out to the police for help.

After killing his wife, Nargis, the man fled with three of his children and left the other three behind. The police found the woman's body in the pot with her leg severed. According to local media reports, Khan severed one of Nargis' legs after he could not fit her body in the cauldron.

The police have registered a case, and a manhunt has been launched to nab the accused. However, the motive behind Khan's gruesome action is still not clear.

The elder daughter informed the police that Khan was pressuring her mother to engage in illicit relationships and killed her when the latter refused to do so, per a report in The Independent. The other three children are currently in police protection.

"We have three children with us. They are shaken and traumatised," said District East Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Abdur Rahim Sherazi.

The incident has sparked outrage across Pakistan, a country that already has a bad record when it comes to the treatment meted out to women. A Thomson Reuters Foundation study even ranked Pakistan as the sixth most dangerous country for women.

According to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at least 85 percent of women in Pakistan "have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some time in their life."

A World Economic Forum (WEF) report recently ranked Pakistan as the second-worst country in terms of gender parity. The country has been placed in the 145th spot out of the 146 countries surveyed for the report. Pakistan reported the most number of cases of violence against women in May this year, per the WEF report.