KARACHI: A teenage girl who eloped with a man in Pakistan's southern Sindh province had asked him to strangle her to death to avoid being killed for ‘honour’ by her family, police said the suspect had told them during investigations, with the brother of the girl saying the family would pursue justice for his sister.

Hundreds of women are murdered each year in Pakistan, mostly by family members, in so-called “honour killings” that punish women for eloping, fraternizing with men or other infractions in defiance of the conservative values that govern women’s modesty in the country.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 430 cases of honour killing were reported in 2020, involving 148 male and 363 female victims. Of these cases, 215 victims, 136 of them female, belonged to the southern Sindh province.

But in a bizarre twist from most honour killing cases, in this one, the suspect told police he committed the murder on the instructions of her lover and because she wanted to escape near-certain death at the hands of her family.

Nagrena Chandio, 18, eloped with a close relative, Mehtab Chandio, on Januray 19, and left for Balochistan’s Sohrab city with the intention of marriage, Senior Superintendent of Police Irfan Samo told Arab News, saying the couple returned after a few days to Seeta town in Sindh's Dadu district, where the suspect strangled the girl, as per his confession before police.

Nagrena's family had registered a missing person complaint on January 21 while police said they found her body on the night between January 24 and 25. Last Saturday, February 19, police arrested Mehtab Chandio.

Mustafa Pathan, the officer investigating the case, said the girl had eloped with Mehtab with the intent to marry him but after the couple ran out of the little money they had, they returned to their hometown. There, the girl said she would not go home to her family and asked Mehtab to kill her instead.

“She thought she would face certain death at home, so she preferred to be killed by her lover,” the officer said, quoting Mehtab’s version of events revealed during investigation.

The official said he believed Mehtab killed the girl because he did not intend to marry her and feared she would identify him before the family if she returned home alive.

Babul Khan, the victim's brother, said his sister had been engaged to another man but ran away with Mehtab who had now confessed to killing her.  

Khan’s family is linked to Mehtab’s by marriage, his elder sister being the wife of the suspect's brother.

“Mehtab’s family neither asked for the hand of our second sister [Nagrena for marriage to Mehtab], nor could we accept the proposal as she was already engaged to another man,” Khan told Arab News, adding that his family had decided to "take the culprit to task."

Mehnaz Rehman, a rights activist, said the incident highlighted how little choice women had in an honour-based society.

"In this case, the girl knew that she would be killed anyway," Rehman said. "We must fight for the freedom of choice.”