MANSEHRA: The police on Sunday arrested a man, who allegedly stoned his wife to death and tried to portray the incident as an accident, in the Ghanool Valley of Balakot tehsil here.

“We have arrested the accused, who had married the woman after she allegedly eloped with him and later killed her brutally,” SHO Kaghan police station Sadaqat Khan told reporters.

The gruesome murder took place on August 12 in Manoor Valley, where the accused allegedly took his wife to a mountainous area on the pretext of a recreational trip and stoned her to death.

“The accused had married her about 10 months ago. After she succumbed to her injuries, he threw her body into a ditch to make it appear that she had died in an accident,” Mr Khan said.

He said police initially suspected that the woman had been killed rather than having succumbed to injuries sustained after falling from a nearby mountain at the crime scene.

“The accused performed all the burial rituals immediately after the incident in an attempt to conceal his brutal act, but we traced and arrested him,” Mr Khan said.

A brother of the slain woman stated in the FIR that his sister had married the accused of her own free will despite opposition from her family. “The accused recently contracted a second marriage with his former fiancée and, to get rid of my sister, he killed her and threw her body into a ditch to conceal his crime,” he alleged. According to police, the accused was arrested and produced before a court in Balakot. The judge sent him on judicial remand after he allegedly confessed to the crime.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2026