A Pakistani woman was arrested for burning her daughter alive, on Wednesday. Her daughter had allegedly defied her family’s diktat and married a man she was in love with, the police said.
The killing took place in Lahore, the country’s cultural hub, and the mother was arrested the same day, revealed Police official Sheikh Hammad.
According to the police report, the suspect, Parveen Rafiq, confessed to tying up her 18-year-old daughter Zeenat Rafiq to a cot after which, with the help of her son, Ahmar Rafiq, she poured oil on her daughter and set her ablaze.
Growing Number of Honor Killings in Pakistan
Nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called “honour killings” in Pakistan for allegedly violating conservative norms of love and marriage.
A schoolteacher, Maria Bibi, was assaulted and set on fire last week for refusing to marry a man twice her age. Before she died, she managed to give a statement to the police, testifying that five attackers had broken into her home, dragged her out to an open area, beat her and set her ablaze.
The prime suspect in the case, the father of the man she refused to marry and the other four are all in custody.
A month earlier, police arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who allegedly strangled a girl and set her on fire for helping a friend elope. The charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van.
Zeenat Rafiq, had got married last month before a court magistrate to a motorcycle mechanic, Hasan Khan, said Hammad.
Three days ago, he said, the girl’s mother and an uncle visited her to try to persuade her to return home and have the marriage ceremony repeated in a traditional family function, instead of being labelled her whole life as someone who had “eloped.”
Khan, her husband, told the local Geo News TV station that his bride had feared the worst.
“Don’t let me go, they will kill me,” Khan recounted his wife telling him.
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