PAKISTANI INQUIRY REVEALS DETAILS OF A WOMAN'S 'HONOR KILLING'
By Salman Masood

December 14, 2003 – (NYT) News of the death of Afsheen Musarrat, 22, quickly gave rise to speculation.

Residents, mostly landowning families, noticed that Ms. Musarrat's family showed no signs of grief or mourning. The family buried her in their ancestral graveyard in a farming village 40 miles away.

Neighbors whispered that her death last month was not natural, as claimed by the family. They suspected another "honor killing."

"We have a culture of silence," said Rashid Rahman, a human rights advocate in Multan who persuaded the authorities to open an investigation against her family. "People continue to suffer in silence. No one gets justice unless someone powerful intervenes."

Each year, hundreds of Pakistani women are believed to be killed by family members on the ground that the woman's behavior has damaged the family's reputation. The women include those believed to have committed adultery and those who marry without the family's consent.

Many of these killings go unreported, or if reported, are not investigated. Ms. Musarrat's case is unusual.

On Nov. 22, the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, ordered the case investigated after a national weekly newspaper, The Friday Times, challenged him to act.

So far this year, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has received reports of 132 honor killings in Punjab, an eastern province. Among those killings, the local police reported 62 cases in southern Punjab Province, which includes Multan, an area still dominated by feudal landlords.
Word of the case reached Mr. Rahman, the human rights investigator, soon after Ms. Musarrat's death, and he started an investigation.

The trouble began when Ms. Musarrat secretly fell in love with a maternal cousin, Hasan Mustafa, 24, by Mr. Rahman's account. But her family did not approve.

Instead, her father, Musarrat Hussain Sahoo, 55, a lawyer, and her grandfather, Allah Ditta Sahoo, forced her on Sept. 15 to marry a paternal cousin.

Her father's relatives, who own hundreds of acres of land, apparently feared losing some of it if their plan was not carried out.

Relations between the sides of the family had soured years before, local people said, and the paternal side apparently feared that if Ms. Musarrat married a maternal cousin, they would have to transfer some holdings to the maternal side through a dowry and inheritance.

But after Ms. Musarrat was forced to marry the paternal cousin, she told him that she did not want to live with him and wanted a divorce. She returned to her parents' home.

Her father and grandfather are believed to have locked her in a room, a cousin said. The investigator and some of her relatives said she was beaten.

On Nov. 1, a maid who had helped Ms. Musarrat secretly communicate with her lover helped her flee, the cousin said. She and Mr. Mustafa fled to an acquaintance's house in the northern city of Rawalpindi.

But the family tracked her down and on Nov. 8 brought her back to Multan. Two days later, the family said she had died of natural causes.

After General Musharraf ordered an investigation, the police exhumed Ms. Musarrat's body. The district health officer ruled that she had died of strangulation.

The investigation continues. Ms. Musarrat's father surrendered to the police on Nov. 27. Her grandfather remains in hiding.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/international/asia/14HONO.html