A man who allegedly shot dead his daughter to preserve his honour was sent to Mansehra Jail on judicial remand on Monday.
Gulzamin Bibi 15, was shot dead by her father Mashooq Sultan in Sooraiy Cheeran village five days ago after he allegedly caught her with a boy. Sultan was produced before the court on expiry of a three-day physical remand.
The boy managed to escape from the scene but Gulzamin fell prey to her father’s fury. He shot her several times with a pistol, killing her on the spot and then secretly buried the victim without offering namaz-e-janaza.
However, he was forced to hand himself over to police after his son Shahroom Khan pointed out that his sister was missing and their father might be involved in her disappearance.
The man later confessed before the police that he gunned down Gulzamin for getting involved with a boy and bringing a bad name to the family.
He told the police that he shot her and buried the body in a deserted place. The police exhumed the body after obtaining a warrant from the area magistrate and registered an FIR against him under section 302, 201, 202 of the PPC.
This is the second time in three weeks a girl’s body has been exhumed in Hazara. Rehnaz Bibi, 13, was shot with an AK-47 by her cousin for asking a boy she liked to marry without her family’s consent.
Even though she received 30 bullets, the family in connivance with the police, declared the murder an accident and buried the body. The case was reopened after human rights activists approached the court.
Police record suggests that in the past 41 days, five women and three men accused of illicit relations were killed allegedly to protect honour in Kohistan, Torghar and Mansehra.
Violence against women has shown an alarming rise in the first two months of 2012 in Hazara. The actual figures are much higher, because most murders of women are not reported or declared accidents to ‘protect honour’.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 14th, 2012.
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Such a tragedy. May we one day live in a world where these sorts of crimes have no place.
Can I ask the editors (or whoever is responsible for headlines) why do they try to put a fascade of respectability on what is simple murder by calling it Honour Killing? If you take the life of someone with malice aforetought then its murder, whatever the motive, be it that of a young girl who is shot by her sorry excuse of a father or an old man who gets robbed and killed in an alleyway or when some idiot blows homself up in a crowded market, it is and remain just that; murder.