• Levies nominate five, including brothers of slain woman
• Couple married seven years ago, has two kids

QUETTA: Another couple was gunned down in Balochistan in the name of so-called honour after the family of the slain woman invited them to Quetta on the pretext of reconciliation after seven years of their “love marriage”.

The murder took place in the Lakpass area of the Mastung district, and the brothers of the woman have been named in the case registered by Levies at the Wali Khan station in the district.

Dawn.com reported that the case was registered by the deceased husband’s brother at the station under sections 34 (common intention), 302 (murder) and (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). Five people have been nominated in the FIR.

Levies officials said that the woman, who was pregnant, was killed by her brothers along with her husband in Lakpass.

According to the Levies officials, Muhammad Shoaib, 28, a resident of Panjgur, and Benazir, who hailed from Quetta’s Hazarganji area, fell in love and had a court marriage without the consent of Benazir’s parents.

After the marriage, they had settled in Panjgur and had been living in Cheetkan area for the last seven years. During this period, they had two children while Benazir was also expecting a third child. Levies officials said that the initial investigation revealed that Shoaib had established contact with the family of his wife, and apparently both sides had reconciled.

Subsequently, the family invited the couple to Quetta for lunch, and they left for the provincial capital in a pickup (truck) on Monday. However, they could not reach Quetta as the vehicle broke down, and they decided to stay in a hotel located at the Noshki cross near Lakpass. As they did not reach Quetta, the brothers of the slain woman asked them for their address and reached there in the morning and shot them with pistols, killing them on the spot.

The suspects managed to escape the crime scene. The Levies, soon after receiving information about the incident, rushed to the site and shifted both bodies to the district hospital in Mastung. Levies SHO Pir Jan confirmed that the brothers reached the hotel and killed their sister and brother-in-law and escaped. “The two children of the couple remained safe, as they had left them behind with their uncle in Panjgur,” the officer said.

“We are making all-out efforts to arrest the brothers of Benazir,” SHO Pir Jan said, adding that some arrests had been made for interrogation.

The incident comes over a week after the killing of a couple in the Quetta district, which had sparked nationwide outrage and led to the arrest of more than a dozen, including the mother of the slain woman. The video of this incident had gone viral on social media and prompted the Balochistan Assembly to pass a joint resolution against the barbaric practice amid calls for exemplary punishment to the culprits. The serious crime investigation wing of the police has been investigating the case and arrested 16 people, including the elder of the Satakzai tribe and the mother of the slain woman.

Published in Dawn, July 31st, 2025