A newly born girl and three women were strangled to death by the women’s two male relatives in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, apparently because the men suspected one of the victims of having an affair that disgraced the family, police said.
The bodies of the victims were found on Sunday after the self-confessed killers led police to a plot in a Lahore residential neighbourhood where they had hid them, Raja Riffat, a police superintendent in Lahore said late on Sunday.
The men identified as Peeran Gujjar (45) and Shaukat Ali (28), were arrested in Lahore on Saturday. They have confessed to strangling the women and the child, and are unrepentant, Riffat said.
”’We have no regrets’,” the police official quoted the men as saying during initial investigation.
The victims were the wife and two daughters of Gujjar. The baby was his alleged illicit granddaughter. Gujjar’s elder daughter, Seema (21) was married to Ali.
Ali’s wife gave birth to the child six months after their marriage. Believing the birth was too soon after the wedding, he suspected his wife may have conceived it from her relations with another man, Riffat said.
On June 9, the two men allegedly drugged the victims by lacing their food, and when they lost consciousness, strangled them, according to the police official. Their bodies were dumped in Lahore’s Johar Town residential neighbourhood.
Hundreds of women fall victim to honour killings each year in Pakistan where men victimise their female relatives for disgracing family honour by having relations outside of marriage. – Sapa-AP