Pakistan top court probes girls-for-murder deal

KARACHI, June 28 (Reuters) Pakistan's Supreme Court today ordered an inquiry into a decision by a village council to give away five minor girls in marriage as compensation for a double murder case, police said.

A council of elders, or jirga, in a village in southern Sindh province was reported to have ruled earlier this month that the killers' families should hand over the girls to the family of a man and woman slain in 1997. The two families were related.

The girls, aged between 13 months and six years, would have been given away in marriage once they reached puberty but authorities acting on media reports stepped in and stopped them.

The Supreme Court has ordered an inquiry and a report to be submitted within two weeks, Shahab Mazhar, a district police officer in Kashmore district of Sindh province told Reuters.

''If there is evidence that a jirga was held and the girls were given in compensation, then a case should be registered against the concerned people,'' Mazhar quoted the court order.

Three men, including Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, an opposition lawmaker who served as defence minister in the mid 1990s under Benazir Bhutto's premiership, alleged to have called the jirga attended the Supreme Court hearing in Islamabad and have denied the accusation, police said.

The murdered couple were accused of adultery and declared ''karo kari'' - meaning ''black man'' and ''black woman'' - before being slain by their relatives.

One of the five girls is a daughter of a man who was detained just last week for the killing of his sister-in-law nine years ago.

The relatives suspected of murdering the man have not been arrested as yet.

Hundreds of people are slain every year, mainly women in Pakistan's backward, rural communities, in the name of honour due to a custom that owes more to tribalism than religion.

Although government says it promotes the rights of women, it is still common in rural areas, where feudal and tribal ways hold sway, for girls to be given as compensation to settle disputes.

REUTERS SHR VV2055