Honour killing case: girl’s mother, five others under probe

CHITRAL: In honour killing case of Lot Oveer, six people have been taken into custody but police still grope in the dark about three weeks after the two persons were killed.

The 23-year-old man and the girl, aged 19, were killed on June 19 and their bodies were found dumped in a wooded area of the village.

A resident of the area told ChitralToday on phone that the six people taken into custody have been shifted to the Booni police station for questioning. They included the mother of the slain girl, he added.

Earlier, three persons from the family of the murdered man had been taken into custody but the police later let them off, he added. None of the relatives of the slain girl and the young man approached the police to register an FIR of the incident.

The police registered the case of the honour killing on behalf of the state. There have been allegations that the area people were trying to show the honour killing as suicide with some political figures using their connections to hush up the case. 

When asked why the suspects were taken to Booni when there was a police station in the area, the resident said the police station was set up in the area in 2015 but it still has no building of its own and most of the 40 personnel, including the SHO, are staying and working in tents.

He said the police station lacked resources such as lock-ups and rooms to keep record as well as for interrogation purposes.

The resident said all records, including the FIR, postmortem and DNA reports of the honour killing, have been taken to Booni by the police.

In reply to a question, he said it seemed people of Nichagh, a village of about 40 houses, are bent upon protecting the killers.

When a close relative of the slain girl was approached by investigators and told that traces detected on the weapon used in the crime [a 12-bore gun] matched with his fingerprints, he maintained that soon after the murder he and other people had reached the spot and touched the weapon and its spent rounds without knowing its impact on the investigation.

The resident also told ChitralToday that since the establishment of the police station in Oveer, seven people have been murdered in the area and almost all cases remained untraced.