ISLAMABAD: Pakistani police announced Friday that all five suspects in the brutal killing of a 19-year-old schoolteacher who was tortured, doused with gasoline and set on fire earlier this week for refusing to marry a man twice her age are now in custody.
Before she died, Maria Bibi had given a statement to police, saying five attackers had stormed her house in the town of Upper Dewal on Monday, dragged her to an open area and kicked her as though she were a “football.” She was brought to Islamabad hospital in critical condition and later died. The attackers fled after the assault. Bibi’s family has maintained that she was killed for rejecting a marriage proposal from a man who owned a school and wanted her to marry his son.
The case has shocked the nation though violence against women is not uncommon in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called “honor killings” for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage.
Police official Waheed Ahmed said Friday that three more suspects in the case were arrested early in the morning, following the two arrests made the day before.
He identified the prime suspect in the case as Shaukat, the owner of the school who is nearly 60 years old and whose son, a man about 40 years old and already married, was the intended groom.
Before she died, Maria Bibi had given a statement to police, saying five attackers had stormed her house in the town of Upper Dewal on Monday, dragged her to an open area and kicked her as though she were a “football.” She was brought to Islamabad hospital in critical condition and later died. The attackers fled after the assault. Bibi’s family has maintained that she was killed for rejecting a marriage proposal from a man who owned a school and wanted her to marry his son.
The case has shocked the nation though violence against women is not uncommon in Pakistan, where nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called “honor killings” for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage.
Police official Waheed Ahmed said Friday that three more suspects in the case were arrested early in the morning, following the two arrests made the day before.
He identified the prime suspect in the case as Shaukat, the owner of the school who is nearly 60 years old and whose son, a man about 40 years old and already married, was the intended groom.
