Axe murders: Five of a family killed for ‘honour’

Sister killed because ‘she was seeing a man’, parents because they were supporting her.

SARGODHA:

A 22-year-old man, arrested on Monday night in Sargodha on charges of killing his parents, sister and a nephew and a niece, confessed to the crime on Tuesday. He said he had killed them because his sister was seeing a boy and his parents had failed to stop her.

Talking to The Express Tribune, his elder brother, however, dismissed the suggestion that their sister could be seeing a man. He said his brother was making up the story.

Speaking at a press conference, Saddam Hussain, a resident of Chak 48 South, said that had Zafar, a resident of Chak 101 South, not fled from his house on Monday morning, he would have killed him as well. “I came in and saw the two of them together. I couldn’t think of anything but killing them,” he said.

He said first he went for Zafar but when he jumped out through the window he attacked his sister, 13-year-old Nazia Bibi, with the axe and killed her. On hearing the girl’s screams, he said, their parents came in from the other room. “They started shouting at me. I killed them as well,” he said. Hussain said later he killed his 8-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew, who were present in the house at that time, to make sure there were no witnesses left alive.

Hussain said he had warned his sister in the past to ‘mend her ways’. He said he had no regrets over the murder of his parents because ‘they had been supporting her all along’. “They deserved what they got.”

Mian Khan, Hussain’s elder brother and father of the two children he killed, rejected that their sister could have been seeing a man named Zafar.

He said Hussain was making up the story. He said his house was only a few streets from his parent’s house and that he frequently visited them. He said he had never seen any outside man in or around the house.

Earlier, the police arrested Hussain after tracing the blood-stained axe and clothes he was wearing when he killed the five members of his family in the house.

SP (investigation) Sarfaraz Nawaz said that before they had found the axe and the clothes the man had accompanied them around the house. Nawaz said a case had been registered under Section 302 and the accused would be produced in the court on Wednesday.

The deceased were laid to rest on Tuesday morning.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2011.