Murder of Sandeela Kanwal

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.

Background

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]

Crime and punishment

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 expressed a desire to follow 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]