Karen McVeigh
Wednesday January 30, 2008
The Guardian

Police are investigating how a young pregnant British woman died after
being admitted to an abortion hospital in Pakistan, a month after her
secret wedding.

Sobia Wali, 22, was believed to be four months pregnant when she died in
reportedly uncertain circumstances in Lahore, Pakistan's second biggest
city, during a trip with her family.

A police source in Lahore said Wali, from Crookston, Glasgow, was
initially admitted to Najma Zia, understood to be a hospital, for a
termination, but was subsequently taken to the Surgimed hospital in
Lahore where she died.

Her husband, Usman Gulzar, 24, a shop assistant from Glasgow, has
reportedly told friends she had sent him text messages from Pakistan
asking for his help.

A day after sending the messages, she died apparently from food
poisoning or a virus. A close friend of the couple told the Daily Record
that Wali, who married Gulzar on December 27 in a registry office in
Glasgow, had not told her parents of the wedding because they had banned
them from seeing each other.

Wali, a call centre worker, had reportedly also kept her pregnancy
secret until after she was married.

The friend said: "Sobia and Usman had been seeing each other for ages
but both families disapproved of the relationship."

"She had been planning setting up a new life with Usman but was
terrified about what her family would think.

"She had brought them a lot of disgrace by getting pregnant out of
marriage but it wasn't just a case of marrying Usman and making
everything all right."

"It was all very much more complicated than that. She knew she had to
choose between Usman and her family and she had made her choice. She was
waiting for the right moment to make some kind of break."

Sobia reluctantly accompanied her parents, Muhammad and Safia, to
Pakistan for her grandmother's funeral, the source told the newspaper.

"After she got there, the details all became a bit murky and no one in
Glasgow really knows what happened," he said.

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