‘Kill them to salvage the tribe’s honour’ 
 
 A teenage couple accused of violating the Pashtun ‘code of honour’ killed with electric shocks. The murders executed by family members on the orders of a jirga of elders of the Mohmand tribe. 
 
 First to fall prey to misconstrued notions of honour was the 15-year-old girl. By the next sunrise, the 17-year-old boy too was no more. 
 
 Over the next few days, their bodies simply disappeared, buried in the dark of night. There was no mourning, no last rites and no prayers for the departed. 
 
 Any reader would be forgiven for assuming this brutal tragedy occurred somewhere in the tribal reaches of the country. But this was in Karachi, the largest urban centre of Pakistan, where the laws of the country apply in full force. 
 
 The area where this atrocity played out was Ali Brohi Goth, a locality in the suburbs of Karachi that falls with the jurisdiction of the Ibrahim Hyderi police. 
 
 As per information garnered from local residents and police sources, the wheels of tribal ‘justice’ were set in motion on August 14, the day the country celebrated 70 years of its existence. 
 
 The girl, 15-year-old Bakht Taj, daughter of Hikmat Khan, had allegedly attempted to elope with 17-year-old Rehman, son of Muhammad Afzal. Both families belong to the Safi sub-clan of the Mohmand tribe and reside in Ali Brohi Goth. 
 
 On Independence Day, Taj disappeared from her house with cash and jewellery. While she stayed at a house in the nearby area of Gulshan-e-Buner, Rehman was to remain at his own home so as to not arouse suspicion. 
 
 As Taj’s frantic parents scoured their daughter’s room for any clue to her whereabouts, they soon found a mobile SIM card registered in Rehman’s name. The oversight would prove fatal for the teenage couple as the elders managed to track Taj down and brought her home on the same day. 
 
 A broken agreement 
 
 Realising the gravity of the matter, Rehman’s father, Afzal, visited Taj’s house to meet her father, Hikmat, and extended a marriage proposal. Knowing well the possibility of violent retribution from Taj’s family, Afzal relied on another archaic tribal practice, Swara (offering girls of the family for marriage), to pacify Taj’s parents. 
 
 Along with promising to give two of his daughters for marriage, Afzal offered to bear all the expenses of Taj and Rehman’s wedding and also proffered a cow as compensation. 
 
 Sources who followed the developments told The News that Taj’s family had accepted Afzal’s offer. An agreement was reached between the two families and over a dozen elders of the Mohmand tribe residing in Ali Brohi Goth, Sherpao Colony and Muslimabad gathered on August 15 for a jirga to conclude the matter. 
 
 It was there that a staunchly conservative elder, Sartaj Khan alias Shagalai, raised objections to the agreement. In his rigid view, the jirga had to punish the teenagers to discourage such acts in the future and their families had to be the ones to kill their children, all to save their and the tribe’s ‘honour’. 
 
 Murder most foul 
 
 Shagalai’s contentions swayed the jirga members and the orders for cold-blooded murder were passed. The adolescents, though, were to die separately. 
 
 Taj’s life was taken first. Her father and uncle, Zar Khattab, made her consume a strong sedative and then tied the unconscious girl to a charpoy. She was then administered powerful electric shocks to end her life. 
 
 Taj was buried that night in secrecy by five tribesmen at the Maula Madad graveyard in Sherpao Colony. The next day, Rehman’s family was made to repeat the same harrowing exercise with their own flesh and blood. 
 
 Rehman’s father, Afzal, had opposed the decision but, according to his relatives, one of the jirga members threatened to have his family in his hometown harmed by Taliban militants if he failed to comply. 
 
 The law strikes 
 
 Everyone involved in the barbaric murders tried to keep it a secret. Fortunately, though, news of the killings soon reached the authorities. 
 
 Law enforcers have been conducting raids and the case has been transferred to the Shah Latif police. SHO Aman Marwat told The News that four people, including Afzal and Hikmat, had been arrested so far while efforts were afoot to track down the main instigator, Sartaj Khan alias Shagalai. The officer said the victims’ bodies would be exhumed on September 13 for autopsies. 
 
 Activists working on gender issues and women’s rights say the practice of killing people over misconstrued notions of honour remains rampant in the country, particularly among Pashtun tribesmen. 
 
 “Such incidents keep occurring in Karachi’s Pashtun-populated localities but due to geographical inaccessibility and an absence of a vibrant civil society in the neighbourhoods, news of these murders often does not make it to the media,” said Mahnaz Rahman, resident director of women’s rights body, Aurat Foundation. ||||| Image copyright AFP Image caption Rights groups say honour killings are on the rise in Pakistan 
 
 The bodies of a teenage Pakistani couple feared murdered in an "honour killing" bear marks suggesting they were electrocuted, police say. 
 
 Officials exhumed the bodies of Bakht Jan, 15, and her boyfriend Rehman, 17, a month after they were buried. 
 
 Doctors, police and a magistrate were present at the graveside in Karachi. Post-mortem results are awaited. 
 
 Police say the couple were planning to elope but their families found out and tribal elders ordered them killed. 
 
 Death by electrocution is almost unheard of in so-called honour killings in Pakistan, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad. The BBC reported a suspected case in the Indian capital Delhi in 2010. 
 
 Four people, including the fathers of the dead Karachi couple, have been arrested. Police are trying to trace the whereabouts of the head of the tribal council (or jirga). 
 
 District police head Rao Anwaar told the media that police had been alerted to the killings and burials by an "informer". 
 
 He said the bodies exhumed at Mauladad graveyard in Sherpao Colony on Wednesday had marks on the arms, chest and legs that indicated electrocution. 
 
 "There were visible signs of electric shock and torture on both bodies," Civil Hospital Karachi Additional Police Surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi confirmed, Dawn newspaper reports. 
 
 Human rights groups say so-called honour killings are on the rise in Pakistan. Most victims are women who are not allowed to liaise or contract marriage with a man without approval of their families. 
 
 Image copyright Zia Ur Rehman Image caption Police exhumed the bodies of the two teens to establish a cause of death 
 
 Those involved in this case belong to the Pashtun Safi tribe from the north-western tribal region of Mohmand. 
 
 Zia Ur Rehman, a reporter for The News newspaper, which broke the story on Saturday, told the BBC that the families had reached a settlement in accordance with their tribal traditions. 
 
 "Under the settlement, the couple were to wed and the boy's family would give the hand of two of its women in marriage to two men of the girl's family as the price of honour. 
 
 "But a jirga called to endorse this settlement on 15 August rejected it and ordered the couple to be killed as a lesson to others." 
 
 Police officer Aman Marwat told the BBC that the relatives arrested "said that both the victims were drugged and then given electric shocks after being tied to a cot". 
 
 He said that Bakht Jan left her home secretly on 14 August, but the family found her hours later at a nearby house waiting for Rehman, who had not yet arrived. 
 
 "The girl was killed on 15 August, and the boy was killed the next day," police officer Marwat said. 
 
 Members of the tribal council were not contactable. Most are thought to be in hiding. No family members were available to comment. 
 
 Nearly 1,100 women were killed in Pakistan in 2015 by relatives who believed they had dishonoured their families, according to an April 2016 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. ||||| The bodies of a teenage couple in Karachi feared to have been murdered by their families after they wished to contract a free-will marriage were found bearing electrocution and torture marks following a post-mortem examination on Wednesday, officials said. 
 
 The bodies of the girl (15), and the boy (17), were exhumed from the Mauladad graveyard in Sherpao Colony in the presence of Azhar Ali Kalhoro, a judicial magistrate, and a team of doctors and police officials. 
 
 Civil Hospital Karachi Additional Police Surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi confirmed that "there were visible signs of electric shock and torture on both bodies." 
 
 Shah Latif Town Police Investigating Officer (IO) Ghulam Asghar Shaikh told Dawn that the girl and boy fled their homes on Aug 14 and stayed at the home of a relative in Sherpao Colony as they intended to marry of their own will. The relative, however, informed the parents of both victims, who then took them away. 
 
 After the development, a 30-35 person jirga was held, presided over by a local tribal elder identified as Sartaj, the IO said. 
 
 Following the jirga, the girl was electrocuted at around 11pm on Aug 15, while the boy was electrocuted around 3am on Aug 16, the IO added. 
 
 Police got wind of the case through an informant and subsequently filed a first information report on behalf of the state, after which four accused ─ the fathers and uncles of the victims ─ were arrested on Aug 21. 
 
 IO Shaikh said the accused, who had confessed to the crime, claimed to repent killing the children, alleging they were under the pressure of the jirga which urged them to murder the pair in order to to protect the 'honour' of their tribe.
– Authorities believe a teen couple murdered last month in Pakistan was killed by electrocution—an extremely rare method of death in so-called honor killings, the BBC reports. The bodies of a 15-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy were exhumed from a grave site in Karachi, and a postmortem examination was conducted Wednesday, according to Dawn. Authorities say marks on the victims' arms, chests, and legs indicate they were killed by electrocution. Four people—the fathers and uncles of the victims—have been arrested in connection with the murders. Authorities say the four have confessed to killing the teens and claim they were pressured by tribal elders to do so in order to protect the honor of the tribe. Authorities say the couple, who sought to marry, ran away from home Aug. 14 but were informed on by a relative. The News reports the two families tried to settle the matter themselves, with the girl's family agreeing to an offer of two girls for marriage and a cow from the boy's family in exchange for the victims' marriage. But one tribal elder reportedly quashed the deal, telling the families they must kill their children to prevent such behavior in the future. Police are currently looking for the tribal elder. Authorities say the girl was electrocuted Aug. 15 and the boy Aug. 16. The bodies were buried in the middle of the night. The family members were arrested Aug. 21. Advocacy groups say honor killings are increasing in Pakistan with women being the most frequent victims. (Five teens in Pakistan were allegedly killed for the crime of clapping and dancing.)