A Pakistani mother has been sentenced to death after killing her daughter in a so-called honour crime.
Parveen Rafiq had confessed to tying her 18-year-old daughter Zeenat Rafiq to a bed and with the help of her son Ahmar Rafiq, dousing her in gasoline and setting her ablaze in June last year.
The killing was carried out by Parveen, in the eastern city of Lahore, because Zeenat had defied her family to elope with the man she loved.
On Monday Parveen was sentenced to death by a judge, who also jailed her son for life. Zeenat’s sister’s husband was acquitted, Dawn newspaper reports.
Parveen, who did not tell the judge she was sorry or regretted her actions, said she had killed her daughter for “bringing shame to the family.”
Zeenat had married motorcycle mechanic Hasan Khan a month before her death, police official Sheikh Hammad said.
He said, the girl’s mother and an uncle visited her to try to persuade her to return home and have the marriage ceremony repeated in a traditional family function, instead of being labelled her whole life as someone who had “eloped.”
Khan, her husband, told the local Geo News TV station that his bride had feared the worst.
“Don’t let me go, they will kill me,” Khan recounted his wife telling him.
Nearly 1,000 women are killed each year in so-called honour killings in Pakistan for allegedly violating conservative norms on love and marriage.