Beyond the law

Loopholes that enable murderers committing crime in the name of honour to be acquitted needs to be closed at earliest

The rule of law in Pakistan is an elastic concept. Laws exist and in an ideal society would be complied with by a population that has respect for the law of the land. Be that as it may, there are in Pakistan, layer upon layer of unwritten laws that come in a variety of forms, with one strata devoted to the ‘law’ as it relates to ‘honour killing’. An ‘honour killing’ is murder by another name, and murder in Pakistan can be a capital crime. Scarcely a day goes by without the report of an ‘honour killing’ somewhere in the country, though the majority anecdotally seem to occur in Punjab. The latest murders to briefly claim the headlines are those of two sisters and their mother killed by their step-brothers in a middle-class area of Lahore. The two men who murdered the women turned themselves in at a police station and surrendered the knife they used to kill all three.

The confessed murderers say that they were provoked into committing the crime by the immorality of their stepsisters, who they alleged to be prostitutes, and the complicity of their mother. Murder in the name of honour invariably goes unpunished in Pakistan, the police taking the view that ‘it is a family matter’ and thus best left to tradition and culture rather than the implementation of the rule of law. Whether or not the sisters and their mother were engaged in prostitution — and the allegation has no evidence other than hearsay attached — the two men committed murder in the eyes of the law and must be arrested and tried, a court of law to decide their guilt or innocence. It is not for the police to make up the law as they go along, and it should be the duty of every police force to investigate and prosecute all crimes that are committed in the name of ‘honour’. As things stand, there are certain loopholes in the law, which enable murderers, who have committed their crime in the name of honour, to be acquitted. This needs to be closed at the earliest opportunity.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2014.

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