'Honour Killings' in Pakistan and Compliance of ... - Aurat Foundation

murder, as all honour killings are, but the motive is not mentioned, and
they are classified as simple murder as opposed to honour crimes or
honour killings. This reflects a social bias in such areas against the
concept of reporting honour killings as a public issue, as opposed to a
private, family issue.
Also, the main form of documentation with the police is FIRs. They do
not keep records of cases files that are passed on to the court, nor are they
regularly updated with what is happening with the case. Therefore, if the
police have registered a case, they may have no idea of what the end
result was. What happened to the case Was the accused found guilty or
not guilty
Further, there are cases that are reported as ‘honour killings’ in police
reports that were actually cases of domestic violence and domestic
homicide. This exhibits a lack of knowledge of the aspects of both honour
killings and/or domestic violence. As far as the police was concerned, a
woman being killed in an argument with her husband or her in-laws made
it an honour killing as she ‘argued too much’ with her husband.
Certain reports were recovered on an ad hoc basis from the courts. Initial
efforts were made to recover court data with regards to honour killings,
but the red tapism made it extremely difficult to do so. In courtrooms
where researchers were given access, similar problems of data recovery
and consolidation faced them.
It also proved to be difficult to interview all those who the researchers set
out to interview. The majority of the attempted interviews failed as
people were reluctant to comment on the issue. Those who had suffered
directly or indirectly from this custom were even more silent on the
matter. It became difficult to get people, especially community people, to
speak on record on the issue. Judges also refused to give personal
comments on the issue.
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