South Asia News
Eloping couple, family killed in Pakistan
Jun 29, 2009, 11:40 GMT
Islamabad - Family members of a Pakistani girl who eloped with a relative killed the newlywed couple and three of the bride's in-laws Monday, police said.
Several of the girl's relatives stormed her new home in the village of Sardheri in the north-western district of Charsadda before dawn and shot dead the couple along with the groom's parents and his sister.
'Preliminary interrogation clearly suggests that it was a case of honour killing,' senior police officer Mukhtiar Khan said by phone.
The teenaged girl eloped with her 30-year-old distant cousin Kamran Nawaz without the consent of the bride's parents.
Charsadda is part of Pakistan's conservative North-West Frontier Province, where the predominantly Pashtun population considers the mingling of the two sexes outside marriage taboo.
Two of Nawaz's brothers who were also in the house where the killings took place escaped unhurt.
Khan said police were hunting three alleged attackers who along with some unidentified accomplices came from the neighbouring district of Mardan.
Killings in the name of family honour are common in Pakistan's rural societies although a law introduced in 2005 by then-president Pervez Musharraf declared the crime punishable by death.
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GooseJun 30th, 2009 - 05:15:15
Muslimes should not use the word Honor, it does not apply to them.
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