Author: Salman Masood
Publication: The New York Times
Date: December 14, 2003
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.
