A Pakistani woman was burnt alive by her husband and his father because she left home without permission – the latest example of the country’s brutal “honor killings.”
Muhammad Siddique was arrested along with his father for immolating his 25-year old wife Shabana Bibi after she went to visit her sister on Friday without asking him, police reported on Sunday.
Upon her return Siddique got enraged and he and his father beat her, said her brother Muhammad Azam. They then doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. Bibi died in hospital on Saturday after suffering burns to 80 percent of her body.
“We have arrested the husband and father-in-law of the deceased woman and charged them for murder and terrorism,” district police chief Rai Zameer-ul-Haq told AFP. The charge of “terrorism” is often applied in such cases to speed up and simplify the trial.
Bibi had been married to Siddique for three years. Her brother said she previously experienced spousal abuse after the couple had problems conceiving a child.
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‘Honor killing’ is a form of domestic violence practiced against women on the grounds of defending family ‘honor.’ Hundreds of women become victims of such homicide every year in Pakistan. In November 2014 four men were sentenced to death over the massacre of their female relative who married against the will of her family.
The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to protect the rights of women in Pakistan, says more than 3,000 women have been murdered as a result of such attacks by family members since 2008.