A pregnant woman has been stoned to death by her own family in front of a Pakistani high court – for marrying the man she loved.
Nearly 20 members of the woman’s family, including her father and brothers, attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in broad daylight.
Farzana Parveen, who was three months pregnant, was killed before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore, police have reported.
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Her father had filed an abduction case against her husband, which the couple was contesting, her lawyer Mustafa Kharal said.
Arranged marriages are considered normal among conservative Pakistanis, who view marriage for love as a transgression
Kharal said Parveen’s relatives waited outside the court, which is located on a main downtown thoroughfare.
As the couple walked up to the court’s main gate, the family members fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, he said.
When she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby construction site, Iqbal said.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private organisation, said in a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in so-called honor killings in 2013.
But the Pakistani rights group, The Aurat Foundation, has said the figure could be closer to a thousand and some estimate the true number could be higher still.
Campaigners say few cases come to court, and those that do can take years to be heard.
Even those that do result in a conviction may end with the killers walking free. Pakistani law allows a victim’s family to forgive their killer.
These people will walk free as hundreds have done before them.
