Two Pakistani-origin Spanish sisters were brutally tortured and shot dead in Gujarat, Punjab. Police arrested six men of the family after getting the report on Sunday, 22 May.
Aneesa Abbas, 23 and Arooj Abbas, 21, were allegedly murdered for denying to bring their husbands-cousins from forced marriages to Spain.
On Friday, 20 May, Aneesa and Arooj were killed in Nathia village, which is about 170 km from Lahore, because they could not get their respective husbands’ visas to settle with them in Spain.
The police report said that both the sisters, who married their cousins in Pakistan almost a year ago, were unhappy with their marriages.
Officer Ataur Rehman said that the women’s brother, a paternal uncle, both husbands, a cousin, and both fathers-in-law were charged with murder. Two unidentified suspects and one relative also accused of murder were still at a run.
The sisters were found dead in their house. The police had earlier stated both the women were killed by their paternal uncle, who is also the father-in-law of one.
Their husbands, Atique and Hasan and their in-laws suspected that they had intentionally delayed the process for their husbands’ visas as their wives did not want to be with them.
Forced marriages are very common in rural areas of Pakistan. As per a report, relatives do not hesitate to kill women who deny the opinions of elders of families. According to human rights bodies, as many as 1,000 women are killed every year in so-called honour killings in Pakistan.
A few years ago, in Gujarat, Sana Cheema, an Italian-Pakistani woman aged 26, was killed by her own father, brother and uncle in the name of honour. Sana’s father wanted her to marry his relative, but she had a boyfriend in Italy with whom she wanted to get married.