The rolling hills of Thandiani have always been a symbol of Abbottabad’s majesty, but today, they stand as a haunting monument to a crime that has disgusted the whole nation. The recovery of Dr Warda Mushtaq from a shallow forest grave at the foot of Lari Binota is not just a police report but rather a visceral story of trust turned into a death trap and a friendship that carried a price tag of 67 tolas of gold.
This wasn’t an act of a cold, calculated execution of a healer who spent her life saving others, only to be hunted by someone she called a friend.
The roots of this tragedy reach back to 2023, when Dr. Warda, who worked as a dedicated physician at the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital, was preparing to move to the UAE. Like many in our culture who tend to value tradition and trust over banks, she placed her life’s security — 67 tolas of gold jewellery — into the hands of a woman she considered a confidante: Rida Jadoon, who also happened to be the wife of a powerful local businessman.
Gold, in this part of the world, is more than just wealth; it is a future. For Dr. Warda, it was her family and her security. When Warda returned from abroad and asked for her property, the “sisterhood” shattered. The requests for the gold were met with excuses, followed by delays, and ultimately, a deadly trap.
The horror unfolded recently with terrifying precision. Police investigations reveal that Rida arrived at the hospital, luring Warda away under the pretence of finally returning the gold.
The DPO’s timeline suggests that Warda didn’t even have an hour to realise that she was in danger. Within 30 minutes of leaving the hospital gates, she was allegedly handed over to hired accomplices, who identified as Aurangzeb and Nadeem, at a secluded, under-construction property. From there, the doctor was transported to the dense, isolated heights of Thandiani Road, murdered, and discarded.
For four agonising days, while her family searched and her colleagues held vigils, Dr. Warda lay in the dirt of the forest while her killers went about their lives in the city below.
When the police finally recovered the body on Monday, the grief in Abbottabad transformed into a roaring fire of defiance.
The medical community, which operates through hospital silence and nonstop work duties, left their positions to occupy the Karakoram Highway with their white medical coats. As anger poured out into the air, the main traffic hub at Fawara Chowk got completely jammed. Not only did people mourn, but they also blamed the police for criminal negligence and the provincial government for total incompetence.
“Four days since she went missing, and the authorities did nothing until she was found as a corpse,” cried leaders of the Young Doctors Association. “This is the failure of the Health Department and the KP Police. We will not return to work while our killers walk free.”
The strike has now gone province-wide. OPDs have been shuttered, and the message to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is deafening: if the healers aren’t safe, the healthcare system will sleep.
Even with the body recovered based on the suspects’ own information, the main accused attempted one last, desperate act of character assassination. Rida filed a petition claiming the gold had been returned and that Dr. Warda was actually the one who owed money.
It was a narrative designed to blame the victim, to suggest a financial dispute rather than a cold-blooded murder. But as the medical community rightly points out, people who are owed money don’t end up buried in a forest grave in Thandiani now, do they?
Dr. Warda Mushtaq was a woman of science and a woman of faith in her fellow humans. She died because she believed in the sanctity of a promise. Today, the hospital corridors she once walked are quiet and haunted by the memory of a healer and a colleague stolen right at the prime of her life.
Tonight, the hills of Abbottabad are reverberating with cries for justice down each street. As JIT sets to work and the suspects sit behind the bars, the nation is waiting to see whether the law rises above power and privilege. The nation has all eyes on whether justice will finally be served for the girl who only asked for what rightfully was hers.