Teenage girl burned alive in Pakistan for 'marrying without family consent'

Victim: Zeenat Rafiq
AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary
Hatty Collier9 June 2016
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A Pakistani mother has been arrested on suspicion of burning her 17-year-old daughter alive for marrying a man against her family’s wishes.

Police said Zeenat Rafiq had been tied to a bed and drenched with kerosene before being set on fire.

Neighbours in the eastern city of Lahore came running when they heard the screams, but family members kept them from entering the house, said Nighat Bibi, who lives nearby.

Officers eventually arrived and found the charred body near a staircase, police said.

The victim's husband, Hassan Khan, told reporters the two had been in love since their school days" but the family had rejected several marriage proposals, forcing them to elope last month.

Hassan Khan shows his marriage certificate to Zeenat Rafiq
AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary

He showed an affidavit of consent signed by his wife before a magistrate. He also showed mobile phone photos of a smiling Zeenat wearing a red dress.

"When she told her parents about us, they beat her so severely she was bleeding from her mouth and nose," Mr Khan told the BBC.

"Her family lured her back, promising reconciliation and a proper wedding reception. She was afraid, she said 'they are not going to spare me'. She didn't want to go but my family convinced her. How were we to know they would kill her like this?"

It is the third so-called “honour killing” case in a month in Pakistan, where attacks on women who go against conservative rules on love and marriage are common.

A month earlier, police arrested 13 members of a local tribal council who allegedly strangled a girl and set her on fire for helping a friend elope. The charred body of 17-year-old Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van.

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