A pregnant woman in Pakistan has been stoned to death by
members of her family because she married a man of her choice
Farzana Parveen was killed by a mob of men, including her
father, brothers and her former fiance, in front of a high court in broad
daylight.
The victim, who was 3 months pregnant, was killed in front
of a crowd in what was described as an “honour” killing.
The woman was killed while on her way
to court to contest an abduction case her family had filed against her husband.
Her father was promptly arrested on murder charges, police investigator Rana
Mujahid said, adding that police were working to apprehend all those who
participated in this "heinous crime."
Arranged marriages are the norm among
conservative Pakistanis, and hundreds of women are murdered every year in
so-called honor killings carried out by husbands or relatives as a punishment
for alleged adultery or other illicit sexual behavior.
Stonings in public settings, however,
are extremely rare. Tuesday's attack took place in front of a crowd of
onlookers in broad daylight. The courthouse is located on a main downtown
thoroughfare.
A police officer, Naseem Butt,
identified the slain woman as Farzana Parveen, 25, and said she had married
Mohammad Iqbal, 45, against her family's wishes after being engaged to him for
years.
Her father, Mohammad Azeem, had filed
an abduction case against Iqbal, which the couple was contesting, said her
lawyer, Mustafa Kharal. He said she was three months pregnant.
Nearly 20 members of Parveen's extended
family, including her father and brothers, had waited outside the building that
houses the high court of Lahore. As the couple walked up to the main gate, the
relatives fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, her lawyer
said.
When she resisted, her father, brothers
and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks
from a nearby construction site, according to Mujahid and Iqbal, the slain
woman's husband.
Mohammad Iqbal, right, husband of Farzana Parveen, 25, sits
in an ambulance next to the body of his …Iqbal said he started seeing Parveen
after the death of his first wife, with whom he had five children.
"We were in love," he told
The Associated Press. He alleged that the woman's family wanted to fleece money
from him before marrying her off.
"I simply took her to court and
registered a marriage," infuriating the family, he said.
Parveen's father surrendered after the
attack and called his daughter's murder an "honor killing," Butt
said.
"I killed my daughter as she had
insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no
regret over it," Mujahid, the police investigator, quoted the father as
saying.
Mujahid said the woman's body was
handed over to her husband for burial.
The Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan, a private group, said in a report last month that some 869 women were
murdered in honor killings in 2013.
But even Pakistanis who have tracked
violence against women expressed shock at the brutal and public nature of
Tuesday's slaying.
"I have not heard of any such case
in which a woman was stoned to death, and the most shameful and worrying thing
is that this woman was killed outside a courthouse," said Zia Awan, a
prominent lawyer and human rights activist.
He said Pakistanis who commit violence
against women are often acquitted or handed light sentences because of poor
police work and faulty prosecutions.
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