Mick Hartley

Shot, then buried alive, for intending to marry men of their own choice – and no one pays:

ISLAMABAD: Three teenage girls along with their two close elderly relatives were shot at before being buried alive in a desert of Balochistan by their tribesmen in the name of honour.

The shocking reports of this horrible incident reaching the capital from different quarters revealed that the girls studying in classes 10 to 12 intended to marry men of their choice through a civil court by defying the centuries-old tribal traditions. When the fuming elders of Umrani tribe came to know about the intentions of these girls to appear before a local court, they picked them up from their homes along with two of their elderly women relatives. The crying girls were pushed into official cars and driven to a deserted area. There they were pushed out of the cars, made to stand in a queue and volleys of shots fired at them.

As the bleeding girls fell on the sand, the tribesmen dragged them into a nearby ditch and levelled it with earth and stones before the girls could breathe their last. As the two shocked elderly women tried to rescue the hapless girls, they too were gunned down and buried in the same manner.

The killers after burying these women returned to their tribe like conquerors without any action against them. The step taken was to send a loud message to the rest of the tribe's girls. Father of these girls lodged an FIR with the police against his own brother, who was said to be the architect of this crime. But after some family pressure, he withdrew the case and so the blood of those girls was forgiven in the name of centuries-old tradition, which does not allow any girl of the tribe to contract marriage of her choice.