Police- Family Killed Newlyweds, Slit Their Throats While Children Watched in Pakistan

By Daniel Distant, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, July 01, 2014

A family rides past the locked house of Rimsha Masih, a Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy, on the outskirts of Islamabad on August 23, 2012. Masih, who is detained on accusations of defaming Islam, was too frightened to speak in a prison where she is being held in solitary confinement for her safety, an activist who said he visited her said on Thursday. | (Photo: REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood)

Police said a family killed newlyweds in Pakistan Thursday after the couple got married to each other without their consent. Sajjad Ahmed, 31, and Muawia Bibi, 17, got married against the wishes of their families, so Bibi's father slit their throats and forced children of the family to watch in an "honor killing."

The family that killed the newlyweds lived in Satrah, Punjab, and neighbors told authorities that the father was intent on killing the couple, according to reports. The Bibi family didn't want Muawia to marry someone from a lesser tribe, but when she did so anyway on June 18, they counted it as immodesty.

"The father of the girl announced loudly that he was going to slit the throat of [the] daughter and her husband," local shop owner Muhammad Ijaz told The Telegraph.

The girl's father, uncles and grandfather lured the couple to their home by telling them that the two families now approved of the marriage. Once they arrived, though, their "arms and legs were tied while their mouths were gagged with pieces of cloth," Ijaz said.

From there, members of the family proceeded to torture the two while the younger children watched; it functioned as a warning to them to never marry against a family's choices.

"It is a case of honour killing. The couple were not beheaded, but were killed with the knives and had severe signs of torture on their heads," Muhammad Pervaiz, the police chief in the area, explained.

Although there were no witnesses to the killing outside of the family, five family members still turned themselves in to police for the brutal murder.

Honor killing comes from Pakistani tribal traditions, and in 2013 869 women were killed as a result, according to the Pakistani human rights commission. The U.N. estimates that 5,000 women are killed per year by their own families in honor killings.