Pakistan: Pregnant woman and her husband tortured and killed by relatives in latest 'honour killing'

A pregnant woman and her husband were abducted, tortured, shot dead then thrown in a canal by relatives in Pakistan who disapproved of their marriage. The so-called honour killings were said to have taken place in the village of Thikriwala in the eastern Punjab province.

Aqsa Bibi, 22, a healthcare worker and Shakeel Ahmed, 26, who worked in a government school, had apparently been married for four years, but Aqsa's family reportedly disapproved and her family had an argument with the pair.

The couple was then said to have been reported missing by Shakeel's father on Wednesday 15 June. Their bodies were discovered dumped in a canal near the village the following day and they had both been shot in the head, CNN reported.

An autopsy revealed that before their murders, they had been tortured. Police believe that Aqsa's brother, named as Muhammad Mauvia, and her mother, Majeeda Bibi, had a hand in their disappearance as part of a larger group of kidnappers.

So far just one relative, identified as 'M Khawar', has been apprehended in connection with the latest instance of a surge in honour killings which prime minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed to eradicate.

Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) which advises the government on religious aspects of law and society, recently declared that killings in the name of family honour is not Islamic. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan 1,100 honour killings took place in 2015.

On Friday 17 June, a man in Pakistan was murdered by members of his wife's family in a rare male honour killing, because they disapproved of their marriage. Muhammad Irshad, 43, was attacked in the middle of a marketplace in the city of Burewala, in Punjab before his throat was slit.

In September 2015 a Pakistani father living in Germany strangled his 19-year-old daughter to death after learning that she had been caught shoplifting condoms to have sex with her boyfriend, who she had been forbidden from seeing.

Asadullah Khan, 51, admitting killing his daughter Lareeb in the early hours of the morning on 28 January 2015.