Shafilea was murdered by her Pakistani parents Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana Ahmed, 49 in 2003, for adopting Western ways. Justice Roderick Evans sentenced the parents, who hail from the Pakistani village of Uttam, and presently living in UK, to life in prison (a minimum of 25 years in prison), after the victims sister provided testimony. Victim’s little sister Alesha told the jurors how her mother and father suffocated her elder sister with a plastic bag.
Alesha revealed that Shafilea and her parents had an argument over Shafilea’s dressing, following which her parents pushed her down on a couch, stuffed a thin white plastic bag into her mouth and held their hands over her mouth and nose until she died.
The young girl rebeled her parents rules since she was 10, and would hide make-up, false nails and western clothes at school, changing into conservative clothes before her parents picked her up. When she became a teenager, she became interested in boys which sparked off her parents frenzy.
Shafilea approached a social worker and told that she was to be married in Pakistan in February 2003. In January 2003, she ran away, to avert her arranged marriage but later she returned. In February 2003, she ran away again.
Alesha told that on the fateful night, her parents complained that her dressing was not decent and she wasn’t properly covered up. After throtling her to death her father carried Shafilea’s body to the car wrapped in a blanket. She was reported missing shortly after, with her parents making a teary-eyed media appeal for information leading to their daughter.
The police was groping in the dark until Alesha provided the key testimony in 2010.