GUJRANWALA: A young mother pregnant with her second child has been slaughtered by her relatives because she married against their will, officials said Friday.
This is the latest in a spate of so-called “honour killings” where relatives slit the throat of a seven-month pregnant woman. A resident of Butranwali near Gujranwala Muqaddas Bibi, married Taufiq Ahmed three years ago in defiance of her family, who considered a marriage for love, instead of an arranged marriage, shameful, police investigator Mohammad Arshad told AFP.
He also told that Muqaddas’s ties with her family were severed after the marriage 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 also said that when she reached her parents’ house, her father, brother and mother cut her throat with a knife and she died on the spot. She had a 10-month old daughter and was seven months pregnant when she was killed, he added.
Gohar said that Muqaddas’s family fled from their house after the murder. Police are hunting for them and have already detained another relative for inciting the killing, he told. 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 received severe condemnation throughout the country. That was swiftly followed by another ‘honour’ killing, of a couple in Lahore who married without their family’s consent. Another young girl was killed by her brother on Sunday for insisting on marrying the man of her choice in Sialkot.
