Aamir Qureshi—AFP
The 22-year-old mother-of-one had married a man of her choice three years ago.
Relatives slit the throat of a young mother who was pregnant with her second child after she married against their will in Punjab province, officials said on Friday, the latest in a spate of so-called “honor killings.”
Muqaddas Bibi, 22, married Taufiq Ahmed three years ago in defiance of her family, who considered a marriage for love—rather than an arranged marriage—shameful, said police investigator Mohammad Arshad.
Bibi’s ties with her family were severed after the marriage, Arshad said, but her mother and brother allegedly approached her at a clinic where she was having a check-up on Thursday and convinced her to come home, saying they accepted her decision. Local police station chief Gohar Abbas said that when Bibi reached her parents’ house, her father, brother and mother cut her throat with a knife and she died on the spot. Bibi had a 10-month old daughter and was seven months pregnant when she was killed, he added.
Abbas said that her family fled from their house after the murder in the village of Buttaranwali. Police are hunting for them and have already detained another relative for inciting the killing, he said.
Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives in Pakistan each year on the pretext of defending what is seen as family ‘honor.’ Last week 16-year-old Zeenat Bibi was killed in Lahore by her mother for marrying a man of her own choice in a case that sparked condemnation throughout the country. It was swiftly followed by another killing, of a couple in Lahore, who married without their family’s consent. On Sunday a young girl was killed by her brother for insisting on marrying the man of her choice in Sialkot.