Pakistani police searching for pregnant woman who had nail hammered through her head in hopes of a son
By Bryan Ke
Pakistani police are now looking to identify the pregnant woman who had a two-inch nail hammered into her head after a faith healer promised that doing so would give her a baby boy.
The incident caught the attention of Peshawar Police Chief Abbas Ahsan after he saw viral images of the woman’s X-ray results on social media, the Capital City Police Peshawar said in a tweet on Tuesday, Newsweek reported.
The woman was treated at Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) in the city of Peshawar. Authorities are now trying to identify her through LHR’s CCTV footage, Dawn reported. They are also looking to bring the faith healer, called a “peer,” to justice, said Ahsan.
“The team will also investigate why [the] incident was not reported to [the] police by the treating doctor,” Ahsan added.
The victim’s family reportedly brought the woman to LRH after she failed to remove the nail from her head with pliers, resident neurosurgeon Haider Suleman told Dawn. The nail missed her brain, and doctors at LRH successfully removed it from her head through surgery.
The woman told the doctors that she was threatened by her husband, who allegedly said he would leave her if she gave birth to another girl. She purportedly sought the help of a faith healer after learning that a pregnant woman she knew also had a nail hammered into her head. The woman allegedly gave birth to a boy despite her ultrasound showing that she would have a girl.
The unidentified faith healer allegedly gave the woman a ta’wiz, a locket that typically holds verses from the Quran, with the nail and a paper containing the words she needed to recite
“The victim then returned home and hammered the nail in her head,” hospital staff told Dawn. “She was discovered by family members after she screamed in pain and was shifted to the hospital.”
Although the woman initially claimed that she was the one who hammered the nail into her head, she later confessed that the faith healer was the one who did it, according to AFP News via Barron’s. The woman was reportedly pregnant with a girl.
According to a 2016 study published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, the majority of female respondents said they would prefer to have a son over a daughter. “Son Preference,” a type of “son-biased fertility stopping” behavior, is prevalent in several Asian countries, including China, India, North Korea and Pakistan.
Featured Image via Pixabay
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