Couple killed in Orangi over ‘honour’

Karachi

Amid the country’s growing focus on the social evil of honour killings following a Pakistani filmmaker winning an Oscar for her documentary based on the issue, a young couple was gunned down in Orangi Town on Monday morning for the sake of “honour”.

Sanaullah, 23, and Sangeena, 17, were murdered in house number 86 in Sector-10 of Bismillah Colony, Orangi Town.

Mominabad SHO Sabir Hussain said the bodies were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital for their postmortem.

During investigation, it was found that Sanaullah and Sangeena had arrived in the city from South Waziristan.

Sangeena was married off with her maternal cousin, Ikramullah, four or five months ago, but a few days later, she and Sanaullah had fled to Karachi.

The SHO said the couple had arrived in the city around three months ago and settled in a slum off the Super Highway.

 A month ago, they had rented a house in Bismillah Colony.

While they were sleeping, Ikramullah and his father Mazamilullah broke into the house and fired gunshots at them. The couple suffered bullet wounds to their upper torsos. The attackers had used 9mm pistols and eight spent bullet shells were found at the crime scene.

Although the government had passed anti-rape and anti-honour killings law in 2014, statistics provided to the National Assembly by the Federal law ministry on Feb 9 show that the social evil menace has not been curtailed, let alone uprooted completely.

As many as 933 people were killed across the country in the name of honour during the past two years, including 83 non-Muslims. The majority of these cases were reported in Sindh.

The number of honour killing cases reported in two years in the Sindh was 602, which include 46 involving non-Muslims. A total of 456 and 477 cases of honour killings were reported in Pakistan in 2013 and 2014, respectively. 

In a recently published report by the Honour-Based Violence Awareness Network, it was stated that an average of 1,000 honour killings occured in Pakistan every year. Mehnaz Rahman, a representative of the Aurat Foundation, said the civil society had been trying to bring the issue into the spotlight for the last 30 years.

Body found

The body of a man who ha drowned in Lyari River was found near Rashid Minhas Road. on Monday morning..

Police said the man appeared to be in his mid-20s and the body was five or six days old. The identity of the man is yet to be ascertained.