The whole town covered up the honor killing. Despite this, some shadows are beginning to rise about the murder in Pakistan of the neighbors of Terrassa, Anisa and Aruj. The mother of the girls, Azra Bibi, would be hidden in another village by one half of the family, so that the other half -particularly hers, her nephew and her son-in-law, Hasan- do not carry out the threat of killing her, according to Dawn journal. The lady, who has a Spanish passport, would have attended the execution of her two daughters, so her testimony could be key in the future trial.
In Pakistan, a crime like the above, on paper could carry the death penalty. However, in a black hole like the Gujrat district, where they occur almost every month, the opposite is more frequent, free acquittal after a very short time. To avoid this, the accusation in this case is carried out by the police themselves, with the aim of avoiding impunity – the result of intimidation – in a crime in which all, perpetrators and victims, are relatives.
In fact, according to the Pakistani newspaper, the entire town of Nothia witnessed what was happening. Almost the entire family had fallen on the girls, to force their will, and the scandal reached the streets of the town. However, the elders of the place would have made those who threatened to intervene desist: “It’s a family matter.”
Then came the blows, the choking screams, and finally the gunshots. No one lifted a finger. The equivalent of the town’s justice of the peace only called the police – from the Galiana police station – when the houses of the different uncles of the victims – poor, almost without furniture – had been abandoned and closed up tight. Omerta is little.
However, the police managed to arrest, in less than 48 hours, the nine allegedly involved, including uncles, cousins ??and brothers. Six of them had fled Punjab and taken refuge in neighboring Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The correspondent of the newspaper Dawn gives an account of the poverty and desperation of the place and of the girls’ fiancés, already accustomed to the lights of Europe. Although the girls were betrothed (nikah) to their cousins ??a year or two ago, it is now known that the marriage had not been consummated. There had been no ritualized abandonment of the parental home to live with the spouse, a circumstance that in Pakistan allows either party to withdraw, especially when the dowry for the bride has not yet been paid.
The two neighboring girls from Terrassa, physically and mentally distanced from their fiancés, insisted on formalizing the divorce, thus burying the dreams of their cousins ??-and their impoverished families- of a rapid legal emigration to Spain. But the young people, by profession shepherds, did not miss an opportunity to criticize the European clothing of their fiancées, widening the abyss.
The trap in which the two girls fell seems to have been laid a long time ago and began with the retention of the mother in the village, when she visited her children who had returned to Pakistan. According to Dawn, the family would have made the girls believe that the mother was in mortal danger. They did not know that they were the ones in danger.