Man stabs two cousins over ‘honour’, leaving one dead

A man was killed and his brother injured when their cousin attacked them in their house in Baldia Town over what police are speculating to be an extra-marital affair.

According to Ittehad Town police station Head Moharir Dilbar Khan, the incident took place in the house of 30-year-old Parvez in Hazara Chowk, Gulshan-e-Ghazi, where his cousin Arif attacked Parvez and his brother Shahzaib with a knife and escaped after stabbing them.

Khan said the injured were taken to Dr Ruth KM Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi where Parvez succumbed to his wounds, while doctors declared Shahzaib safe. The head moharir said area residents told police that Parvez had gone to Arif’s house when he wasn’t around. When Arif returned, he saw Parvez alone with his wife.

Quoting residents, Khan said Arif then thrashed Parvez and threw him out of his house. He added that Arif later went to Parvez’s house and attacked him with a knife, and when his younger brother Shahzaib tried to intervene, Arif stabbed him too.

The suspect managed to escape from the area after the murder, said Khan. When contacted, Baldia Division SP Asif Ali Bughio told The News that the motive of the murder had not yet been ascertained. He added police was investigating the case from all angles.

Such murders for so-called honour are fairly common in Pakistan and routinely reported even from large urban centres such as Karachi. Last month, on January 27, a young man succumbed to severe burn injuries in what investigators described as a case of honour killing. According to police, the victim, Shafi, was in a relationship with a girl and it was her brother who had murdered him with the help of an accomplice. The killing was reported in the city’s Zaman Town, Korangi.

On November 22, a youg couple Hadi Abdullah, 25, and Hussaini Miskeen, 21, were killed on the orders of a jirga for marrying of their free will. Police had arrested nine suspects in the last week of November in connection with the murder.

Prior to that, in August, a teenage couple accused of violating the Pashtun ‘code of honour’ by attempting to elope were killed with electric shocks in Ali Brohi Goth, a locality in the suburbs of Karachi that falls with the jurisdiction of the Ibrahim Hyderi police.

The murders were executed by family members on the orders of a jirga of elders of the Mohmand tribe. The victims were identified as 15-year-old Bakht Taj and 17-year-old Rehman Afzal. Despite their murders having garnered international attention, the case still remains pending in court.