KARACHI – The bodies of the teenage couple, allegedly electrocuted for contracting a free will marriage, will be exhumed for postmortem examination on Wednesday under the supervision of a magistrate and a medico-legal officer, SHO Latif Town said here on Tuesday.
The initial investigation into the murder suggests that the family members of the couple gave them electric shocks until they died before secretly burying the bodies at a graveyard in Sherpao Colony, Ali Hasan Brohi Goth, he said.
Police were hunting for a tribal elder who allegedly ordered a teenage couple to be electrocuted by their families as punishment for eloping.
The couple fell foul of their families after eloping last month. But police said the man’s family persuaded them to return home so they could be married.
A tribal jirga (council) then ordered the couple’s execution after the families had put their case to the influential group of elders.
The couple was tied to a wooden bed and electrocuted by family members. Police said the girl was aged 15 or 16 and the man was around 18 years old.
“The (jirga) decided that the girl would be electrocuted by her own father and uncle and the boy by his father and uncle,” police officer Amanullah Marwat told the media, adding that the families later buried the bodies in secret.
Police have arrested the relatives behind the killings, charging them with murder and tampering with evidence.
However, the leader of the jirga who ordered the murders remains at large.
“We are raiding different places to arrest him,” Marwat said.
Hundreds of women are murdered by their relatives each year after allegedly bringing shame on their families in Pakistan.
Hundreds of women are murdered every year in Pakistan, often by their own relatives, for going against their families’ wishes in matters of love and marriage.
The Aurat Foundation’s annual report of 2016 showed 7,852 cases of violence against women.
