ISLAMABAD, Sept 27: The Sabzi Mandi police on Thursday said an assassin was hired for the honour killing of a couple by their families in the Afghan Basti here last Saturday.

The police arrested the woman’s father, brother and an uncle and are hunting for the assassin who was also a close friend of the deceased man.

On September 22, a man from the Tanoli clan of Swabi approached the police and complained that his daughter, FB, who had eloped with IK, an Afghan national last year, was murdered along with the man at the Afghan slum in Sector I-11/1. Both the victims were shot in their faces from point blank, he said.

During autopsy on the body of the woman, it was revealed that she was three-month pregnant, so the police registered a triple murder case against five persons in response to the complaint lodged by IK’s brother.

When the investigators rounded up the woman’s father and uncle and interrogated them, they failed to satisfy the police from where they had got the information about the killing of the couple and their location as they remained untraced after getting married about a year back. They told the police that some anonymous caller had informed the father of the woman about the incident after which he reached the capital city.

However, during interrogation, the father and uncle of the woman said they had planned the murder in connivance with the family of IK and hired the close friend of the man against Rs700,000 to kill the couple. The families of both IK and FB were angry that despite already being married they had brought dishonour to them.

The investigation further showed that the woman had tied the knot with her first cousin in 2010 and three months later her husband left for Dubai to earn a living there. However, nine months after the marriage, she eloped with the Afghan national, a father of three, who used to reside in her neighbourhood in the Chotta Lahore locality of Swabi.

The woman’s family got a case registered against IK on the charge of kidnapping. After three days, the body of a woman was found in Noshera Kalan, which was identified as that of FB by her family after they got the information through the press.

Though the body was decomposed, the family exhumed it from a graveyard in Nowshera Kalan and buried it in their own village. Later, on the complaint of her family, the Noshera Kalan police registered a murder case against IK.

However, FB personally approached the police who produced her in the court of a magistrate where she stated that she had left her house due to inhuman treatment at the hands of her family and married the Afghan man on her free will. Soon after, the couple disappeared again.

The statement of the woman angered both the families who decided to eliminate the couple, said the police. To accomplish the task, the woman’s family approached IK’s close friend - KZ - who was still in contact with him, and offered him Rs700,000 for killing the couple.

Police said KZ visited IK in Islamabad frequently and for the last a few months he used to come to the rented house of the couple accompanied by another man, PK.

On September 21, the two men visited the house and shot the couple dead.