LAHORE: In a gruesome incident a couple was beheaded in cold blood by the family of the girl over love marriage in Pakistan’s Punjab province, news reports said on Saturday.
The incident took place in Satrah village of Daska tehsil, some 65km from Sialkot city, on Friday, according to the DawnNews.
Police said an FIR lodged with Satrah police station says, Sajjad Ahmed, 27, of village Hasanabad, Sialkot, had contracted a love marriage with Muafia Bibi, 23, of Satrah on June 18.
On Friday, seven members of Muafia’s family, including her father, uncle and a woman relative stormed into house of the newly-weds in Hasanabad, bundled them into a van and took them to an outhouse at Satrah.
The suspects tied up the legs and arms of Sajjad and Muafia and cut off their heads with choppers in public but nobody dared stop them, the FIR said. The suspects fled from the village after the incident.
Dawn quoting Sajjad’s family reported the couple had come into contact several months ago and wanted to get married but Muafia’s parents didn’t agree to her marriage which led to their love marriage. They said the couple was issued threats by the girl’s family.
Police handed over the bodies to Sajjad’s family after autopsy. They were laid to rest amid police security.
Such killings often referred in media as ‘honor killings’ are common across Pakistan.
Though exact data is not available in 2011, human rights groups reported 720 honour killings in Pakistan (605 women and 115 men). In 2010 Amnesty International cited 960 incidents of women alone who were slain in honour killings that year.
Over 4,000 cases were reported in Pakistan between 1998 and 2004. Of the victims, almost 2,700 were women and just over 1,300 were men; and 3,451 cases came before the courts.
The highest rates were in Punjab, followed by the Sindh province. Lesser number of cases have also been reported in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in Balochistan.
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