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False promise trapped electrocuted couple

KARACHI  : B*, 17, and G*, 16, fell in love and wanted to get married. Although both their fathers owned shops across the street and their families were from the Mohmand tribe – living in the Ibrahim Hyderi area of Ali Hassan Brohi Goth for the last 30 years – the couple knew they would not agree to a union.

The young couple also knew that if their families found out, they would either make them stop seeing each other or worse, kill them. They kept their secret for as long as possible and when they realised that this would not amount to anything, they eloped. They had covered half of their proposed journey, when a phone call from B’s house changed everything.

“I told my son to come back home and bring the girl too, while assuring him that I would personally arrange for their marriage,” said Afzal Mir, B’s unapologetic father during the initial investigation.

“When they came back on August 14, I called for the jirga to sit on the matter the very next day. The jirga decided that as punishment for their crime, they will be electrocuted to death,” he added.

The jirga comprised both their families, other members of the tribe and a tribe elder who served as sarpanch or leader.

“It was decided that B and G will both be electrocuted by their own family members instead of in the presence of the jirga,” the girl’s father, Zarkhitab revealed during the investigation. “We tied our daughter down on a charpoy so that she could not move and electrocuted her till she died.”

The boy was also tied down in a similar fashion and electrocuted the next day.

The families quietly buried the bodies at the Maula Madad Graveyard located in Sherpao Colony in the Shah Latif area. It took a month for news of the brutal honour killings to reach the police but they acted quickly and raided the deceased couple’s houses. They managed to arrest both their fathers and uncles but could not catch the jirga leader who remains at large.

“So far we have made four arrests and they have all confessed to the crime,” confirmed Shah Latif Station SHO Amanullah Marwat.

The case officially falls under the jurisdiction of the Ibrahim Hyderi police station but has been transferred to the Shah Latif police station where an FIR no 148/17 has been filed under Sections 302/34 for murder, Section 201, 202 for hiding a crime, and Section 109 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

In order to continue investigation, the police will exhume the bodies and conduct post mortems in the presence of a medico-legal officer and the magistrate, SHO Marwat explained, while adding, “We are still looking for the two dozen people who were part of the jirga and the jirga leader who authorised such brutality.”

The Express Tribune

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