24 honour killings in February

Cases of honour-killings were more widespread in February this year against the preceding month as 24 cases were reported in 16 districts against 19 recorded in 12 districts in January, says a report compiled by Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen).

The report, which was released on Friday, said that despite government’s efforts to eradicate the practice, all four provinces reported at least one such case.

Twelve cases were reported in nine districts in Punjab, nine in four Sindh districts, two in as many districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and one in a Balochistan district.
Fafen monitors visited 78 offices of District Police Officers (DPOs) to gather information on FIRs registered for 27 offences falling under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Of the monitored districts, 28 were in Punjab, 21 in Sindh, 18 in KP, 10 in Balochistan and one in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

The report said that as many as 35,078 FIRs were filed for the observed crimes during the reporting month.

A region-wise break-up shows that 65 percent of the total crimes were reported in Punjab, 22 percent in KP, 12 percent in Sindh and 1 percent in Balochistan.

There were 129 cases in ICT.
A better outreach, lack of parallel judicial systems and a higher confidence level between police and the people were cited as probable reasons for better crime reportage in Punjab than other regions.

Of the total, 7,091 FIRs were lodged for crimes pertaining to property.

Forty-one percent of these were for cases of theft, followed by motor vehicle lifting (24 percent), robbery and dacoity (18 percent), motor vehicle snatching (12 percent), criminal trespass (4 percent) and extortion (1 percent).
There were 2,949 FIRs registered for crimes ensuing in physical harm to people.

Among these, hurt was most frequently reported (42 percent), followed by attempted murder (25 percent) and murder (23 percent).

Six percent of the FIRs were for accidental deaths (qatl-i-khata), illegal confinement (2 percent) and terrorism-related incidents and accidental death (katal-bis-sabab/1 percent each).
Furthermore, of the 2,329 cases of threat and fraud, 59 percent were of counterfeiting currency.

Cheating followed with 17 percent cases, criminal breach of trust with 14 percent, criminal intimidation 6 percent and offences against public tranquillity 4 percent.
A total of 793 cases were registered for crimes against women, the report said.

Most frequent and widely reported of these were FIRs for forced marriage.

These constituted 40 percent of the total cases.

Twenty-four percent of the cases were those of attack on modesty, rape (19 percent), offences relating to marriage (14 percent), honour-killings (3 percent) and word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman (1 percent).

Ten out of 78 districts reported half of the total crime cases of which seven districts were in Punjab and three in KP.

Lahore, Faisalabad and Peshawar were the highest reporting districts.

Business Recorder

 

26
May
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