Pakistani court upholds life term of man in honour killing case

Islamabad, Mar 5: Pakistan's Supreme Court has upheld the life imprisonment handed down to a man convicted for murdering his daughter in an 11-year-old honour killing case, days after a filmmaker from the country won an Oscar for documenting such murders in a film.

Mohammad Zaman killed his daughter Kauser and injured his wife Husa Bibi and two other daughters Kahkashan and Komal in 2005 in Lahore.

The Lahore High Court (LHC) had in May 2013, converted the death sentence awarded to Zaman by an additional sessions court in July 2007, into life imprisonment. A three-judge SC bench, headed by Justice Gulzar Ahmed, yesterday maintained the conviction and the sentence.

The court observed that Zaman had committed a heinous offence in a desperate manner by causing murder of his real daughter. During the hearing in the trial court, Kiran had alleged in her witness account that her father, armed with a pistol and a 'tokka' (a sharp knife like weapon), had killed her sister Kauser and then fled the scene.

Explaining the motive, she said her father wanted to take into possession the money her uncle had sent from London for the wedding of Kauser, scheduled for September 2005.

Zaman in his statement said Kauser had illicit relations with a criminal, Nasir Mughal, with whose assistance she had even kidnapped a person for ransom. According to him, his daughter again developed relations with a police constable on Rawalpindi, forcing him to shift the family to Lahore.

Later, Zaman said, his wife had agreed to marry Kauser with the police constable without his consent. The family had to again shift to another house after Mughal raised hue and cry over the marriage of Kauser with the police constable.

Zaman claimed that it was not he but Mughal who had killed his daughter and injured other members of his family, but his wife leveled allegations against him because she "harboured grudge as I used to pull up my children over bad activities which she used to defend."

Hounour-killing is a big issue in Pakistan and every year over 1,000 girls and women fall victims. Last week, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy won an Oscar for his documentary film 'A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness'.

The story is about a girl shot in the head by her father and brothers, and thrown into a river. She, however, survived to tell the award-winning story.

PTI