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Sandeela Kanwal was a Pakistani woman living in the Atlanta metropolitan area in Clayton County, Georgia, who was murdered by her father Chaudhry Rashid[1] in an honor killing, on July 6, 2008.
Kanwal, aged 25, worked at a Wal-Mart, and her father, Chaudhry Rashid,[1] born in a village in Pakistan,[2] aged 54 and holding United States permanent residency, ran a pizza restaurant in East Point, Georgia.[3] At the time Rashid was married to a woman who was not Kanwal's mother.[4] Rashid's main languages were Punjabi and Urdu. Kanwal and her father lived in a house in Clayton County, near Jonesboro, with their respective spouses and family members.[3][5]
Kanwal had wed her husband in Gujrat, Punjab, Pakistan on March 14, 2002. In November 2005, Kanwal and her brother purchased the Clayton County house.[3] Circa April 2008, Kanwal and her husband held a marriage ceremony in Pakistan, but the two moved to different cities in the U.S. after her wedding, with the husband moving to Chicago.[1] She resided with her father and did not see her husband after arriving in the U.S.[4] On April 15, they separated, and she filed for divorce on July 1.[3]
A police report stated that from circa May until Kanwal's death, the father and daughter did not communicate with one another.[6] The evening of her death, while the father was driving his daughter back to the house from a late shift at the Wal-Mart, the two had an argument.[7]
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In the early hours of July 6, 2008, Kanwal's father strangled her with a bungee cord.[1] Her body was left in a bedroom on the house's second floor.[8] Rashid burned the bungee cord and flushed the ashes down the toilet, leaving authorities without a murder weapon.[9][1]
The killer's wife called police after leaving the house because she heard screaming in a language incomprehensible to her.[10] Rashid experienced a seizure upon his arrest and was jailed after being hospitalized briefly.[1] The arrest warrant stated that the father said that the divorce caused the family to lose honor.[11]
Due to Rashid's lack of English fluency, he had a court-appointed translator. He also followed Islamic dietary laws while in the county jail.[3] In the trial Rashid's legal team admitted that he committed homicide, but stated that he had no plans to do so and was only spurred by momentary anger.[2] Rashid's lawyers argued that it was not an honor killing.[9]
Rashid was convicted of felony and malice murder and aggravated assault in May 2011, a decision that took jurors four hours. He got a life imprisonment sentence with parole eligibility.[2] Rashid appealed his conviction on the basis that it was wrong for jurors to review footage of his interviews held at a police station. In 2013 the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Rashid's conviction.[12]
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- Ali Irsan (killed Gelareh Bagherzadeh and Coty Beavers)
- Noor Almaleki
- Murder of Tina Isa
- Yaser Abdel Said (killed Amina and Sarah Said)
- Honor killings of people of Pakistani heritage outside of Pakistan:
- Shafilea Ahmed (United Kingdom)
- Gazala Khan (Denmark)
- Samaira Nazir (United Kingdom)
- Aqsa Parvez (Canada)
- Hina Saleem (Italy)
- Sadia Sheikh (Belgium)
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