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CHARSADDA Relatives of a Pakistani teenager who eloped and married without her family's consent shot her dead on Monday in a raid on her new home along with her husband and in-laws, police said.
Dressed in police uniforms, dozens of relatives attacked the bridegroom's house in the district of Charsadda, in North West Frontier Province.
'The assailants took the bridegroom out while some of the attackers climbed the wall and entered the house. They killed the bride, the mother and sister of the bridegroom,' said Charsadda district police official Saleem Jan.
'They beat them first and then shot them dead,' he told AFP.
The groom's father was also killed, another police official told AFP from Sardheri village in Charsadda.
The bride was aged 18 to 19 and the groom 29 to 30, he added.
Police said the teenager, from the deeply conservative Mardan district next to Charsadda, had run away and recently married without telling her parents.
'Both the girl and man married some weeks ago,' the bridegroom's uncle Misal Khan told reporters at the scene.
'The attackers were headed by the (paternal) uncle, cousin and maternal uncle of the girl. One of the attackers left his police uniform at the site. They also left one mobile phone in a pocket of the uniform,' he added.
Police said the main suspects were two uncles and a cousin.
'We have registered a case against three relatives of the girl and their unknown accomplices,' police official Saleem Jan told AFP on telephone.
Human rights groups have strongly condemned the practice of honour killings in Pakistan, which claim the lives of hundreds of women each year.
Amnesty International says many killings are unreported and in almost all cases the perpetrators, who are often close family members, go unpunished.
In 2005, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf introduced the death penalty for honour killings. —AFP
