Honour continues to claim lives in K-P

Little did 17-year-old Owais know that being seen reading with his cousin would come to cost him his life

PESHAWAR:

Honour has long claimed many lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) and continues to be listed among the province’s most vicious killers to date. If one is to go by statistic, official figures disclose as many as 284 men and 369 women, who were murdered in 448 cases of honour killing in K-P, between the years 2012 to 2018 alone.

However, the most harrowing case to rattle the northwestern province in recent times comes from a village in district Charsadda, where a teenage boy was killed in cold blood.

Seventeen year old Owais, an exemplary student of engineering at the Islamia College Peshawar, whose body was discovered in the fields last month. His unpardonable crime— an innocent friendship with his brother-in-law’s niece.

“Owais was a gifted child, with a never-ending thirst for knowledge. I couldn’t study myself, but I wanted my son to live his dreams and become an engineer one day. We worked blood and sweat to acquire a loan of Rs78, 000 to pay for his admission at the Islamia College, one of the province’s top institutions. It was very proud moment for me and my family but little did we know how short-lived our joys would be,” recalled Owais’ father, who works as a motorcycle mechanic in the village. “I still don’t know what my son had done to deserve such a cruel punishment,” he added.

Per case details, Owais had come from the city to his home in district Charsadda to spend his college holidays. Unbeknownst to his fate, the teenager left for his routine stroll around the village on December 05, but never returned. The next day, the student’s dead body was retrieved from a field near the Mandni area in Charsadda. He was shortly rushed to the nearest hospital for a postmortem.

According to Charsadda District Police Officer (DPO), given the ominous circumstances in which the dead body was found, an inquiry was immediately launched into the case. As a result of which, more than 50 houses in the village were profiled, using techniques like geo-fencing. “After an extensive hunt which spanned over 35 days, the data we acquired led us to trace and arrest Illyas, the brother-in-law of slain Owais,” the DPO informed.

Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Yasin, in charge of investigating the case told The Express Tribune, that the police had retrieved a ‘screen-locked’ mobile phone from Owais’ pocket, which served as a significant clue in the case’s unraveling. “It took us a while to bypass security on the phone, but there was some correspondence in it which led us to single out Ilyas as a prime suspect. A month later, he was arrested and put behind the bars.”

Ilyas, in his statements to the police, had maintained that his nephew, a seventh grade student, informed him about Owais befriending his niece. “The two used to read together. My nephew told me that his sister was also having an affair with Owais. Hearing that infuriated me beyond any limits and drove me to killing Owais,” confessed the murderer.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a close friend of the deceased told The Express Tribune that although the two would spend most of their time at the hostel together, he’d never known of a love interest in the Owais’ life. “He was a fun-loving kid, who spent most of his free time watching silly TikTok videos, which he was very fond of,” the friend recalled.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th, 2021.