Further arrests made in wake of honour killing

The Pakistani police said yesterday they had arrested four more people in connection with the death of Farzana Parveen, a pregnant woman fatally beaten by her family in a so-called honour killing that has stirred outrage in Pakistan and across the world.

After an urgent appeal for action from the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, the police on Thursday arrested Ms Parveen's uncle, two cousins and a driver. They are accused of participating in a crowd of about 30 men, said to have been led by her father and two brothers, who surrounded Ms Parveen (25) as she was bludgeoned with a brick outside the Lahore High Court building last Tuesday. The police arrested her father, Muhammad Azeem, after the killing.

A senior investigator, Umer Riaz Cheema, said the four men arrested on Thursday would be presented before one of the city’s anti-terrorism courts, which have special powers to expedite criminal prosecutions.

Public view

The manner of Ms Parveen's death, before a large group of men on a busy street in a major city, has attracted global attention. According to human rights groups, about 900 women died in similar circumstances in Pakistan in 2013, many beaten, stabbed, burned or shot. Photos of Muhammad Iqbal, her grieving husband, hunched over a shawl that covered his wife's bloodied body, have fed the condemnation of honour killings, which often occur in rural areas when a woman elopes with, or marries, a man of her choice.

But new details have suggested money was also a factor in Ms Parveen’s death and that her grieving husband had himself killed a woman. Police records show Mr Iqbal (45) killed his first wife, Ayesha Bibi, in October 2009. In a phone interview, Iqbal confirmed he had killed her to be with Parveen.

Mr Iqbal later asked for Ms Parveen's hand in marriage from her father, who agreed in exchange for a dowry of about $800. But then, he said, the family requested more money, and a dispute emerged. With the matter unresolved, Ms Parveen and Mr Iqbal married last January. – (New York Times service)