ABBOTABAD:
Peshawar High Court (PHC) ordered the Hazara police chief to re-investigate an honour killing case and initiate a departmental inquiry against police officials for covering up the crime on Thursday.
A division bench of the PHC ordered DIG Hazara Dr Muhammad Naeem to submit a report within 30 days.
Rehnaz Bibi, 13, was shot by her cousin in Kakotri, Haripur, on September 11, last year, for asking a boy she was in love with, to marry her without her family’s consent. The boy’s family, reportedly, had sent her back home the same evening with the promise of sending a proposal to her family later.
However, when Rehnaz’s family received the information, her father who was in Karachi in connection with a job, allegedly asked one of his nephews to kill her for disgracing the family. Her cousin, according to Qamar Hayat of Sahara Foundation, a social activist and petitioner in the case, went to Rehnaz’s house and emptied the burst of his Kalashnikov into her, firing 30 bullets at her and killing her on the spot.
She was buried without a from Kakotri, Haripur, postmortem and her family called her death an accident in connivance with the police. They said she was killed when the pistol she was cleaning, went off accidentally. The police sealed the FIR after a brief inquiry, allegedly concealing facts pertaining to her murder in the name of honour, stated the petitioner.
Hayat and other social activists filed an application requesting an inquiry and postmortem of the victim. District and sessions judge Haripur Shaibar Khan ordered the area magistrate Fazal Gul Khan to conduct an inquiry through a medical board last September.
The victim’s parents immediately obtained a stay order from the division bench against the inquiry. The bench comprising Justice Khalid Mahmood and Justice Yahya Afridi has now ordered a re-investigation through an honest and competent DSP after hearing the counsels’ arguments.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2011.
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This is a great achievement for all of us. Justice will be done according to law this news tell us justice can be done in Pakistan if we want to get it. credit goes to social organization which are working on these kind of issues. Thanks to Them................