–Police official confesses to killing his divorcee cousin due to doubts over her ‘character’
A police official in Sukkur used duty rifle to kill his fiancée and paternal uncle on Friday for ‘honour’.
According to details, Sindh policeman Rehmatullah Gopang stormed into his uncle’s flat and opened indiscriminate fire, killing his 65-year-old uncle and his daughter near Launch Mor area on Sukkur city’s Miani Road.
Upon being informed, the police arrived at the flat and shifted the bodies to Civil Hospital for autopsy. The bodies were handed over to the relatives of deceased after the completion of medico-legal formalities.
Sukkur SSP Irfan Samoon later talked to the relatives of the victims and collected information. The victim’s heirs were reluctant to give a statement to media persons as the suspect and victims all belonged to the same family.
The police later arrested the suspect along with the murder weapon — a state-issued G3 rifle. The SSP confirmed the arrest, and the recovery of the murder weapon, saying an investigation will be conducted according to the law.
Meanwhile, Gopang confessed to killing his uncle and cousin, a divorcee. The suspect claimed that his marriage had been arranged with his uncle’s daughter. He said he had doubts regarding her “character”.
The arrested official said he warned her to “not engage in adultery” and even spoke to his uncle about the matter but the uncle “did not disapprove of such behaviour”.
“I was in an emotional state. She was cooking in the kitchen when I went over to shoot her and my uncle was on the prayer mat, preparing to offer his prayers,” the police officer said when questioned by the police to describe the account of the murder.
“No one else was around except for her 12-year-old son who heard the firing and ran away.”
He then confessed to using his duty rifle, saying he was in uniform at the time of the incident and had acted alone.
Last week, a 40-year-old Canadian citizen was killed in a suspected case of ‘honour’ killing in what was initially reported as a suicide.
The victim, Safia Nasir, embraced Islam and married a resident of Lahore’s Samanabad area a few years ago. The couple also had a nine-month-old child from the marriage.
Police said investigation suggests that she was strangled by a noose and then her murder was disguised as a suicide.
In October 2016, a joint sitting of both houses of parliament passed two important and pending pro-women bills against rape and honour killing.
The legislation mandates life imprisonment for honour killings, but whether a murder can be defined as a crime of honour is left to the judge’s discretion.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 280 such murders were recorded from October 2016 to June 2017.