The village elders sentenced an 18-year-old girl to death for dancing with a boy in a video that went popular on Pakistani social media. It is reported that the girl was killed by her own family.
In Pakistan’s rugged Kohistan province, the homicide took place on Sunday, November 26, in the village of Barsharyal.
Pakistani police are looking into whether or not this was an honour killing.
There were rumours that a companion who was in the video had also been given a death sentence, but that the police had saved him from execution.
“They shot one of them dead while police rescued the second one,” stated Masood Khan, the Kolai-Palas district’s deputy superintendent of police.
‘We have started an investigation to find the people who killed the girl and either recommended or called a jirga (the elders of the village) to condemn her to death.
No one was above the law, he continued, and everyone responsible for the heinous murder would be held accountable at all costs.
After the second daughter was saved by the police because there were expected threats to her life, she was shortly sent home with her father after a senior civil judge determined that there was no risk to her life.
Out of concern for possible retaliation, the boys featured in the videos have also fled into hiding.
Dr Farzana Bari, a human rights activist told Geo.tv of her concern for the safety of the second girl.
She believed that she would likely be murdered sooner or later and remains under serious threat, continuing that ‘she has probably been misguided by her family. Knowing the kind of mindset that exists in the area, I think this girl would be killed.’
The caretaker chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Syed Irshad Hussain Shah, said he had ordered police to arrest those responsible.
‘We are investigating, Khan said, adding that male relatives of the young woman were believed to be involved in the killing, as public images of women are considered taboo in the area.