Islamabad, March 28, (dpa/GNA) – Pakistan’s police have arrested a father and a brother, after a video showing the brother strangling his sister, while their father looked on went viral, officials said on Thursday.
The incident in the central province of Punjab, triggered shock and outrage for the nation, plagued by an increase in violence against women.
The 22-year-old woman was killed by her brother, while the father kept watching, and an unknown third person filmed the crime, local police official Rana Akmal told dpa.
The incident occurred in the town of Toba Tek Singh last week. The family buried the woman claiming she died of cholera.
The police however registered the case on Wednesday, after the video went viral, Akmal added.
Both the father and the brother told police they had been raping the woman for years, and killed her to hide their crime, another police official Mohamed Imran said.
Police had exhumed the body on Thursday for an autopsy and a DNA testing to confirm the rape, Imran said.
Raids are being conducted to arrest the person who had allegedly filmed the crime.
Horrific crimes against women including the beheading of a girlfriend by a man, and the gang-rape of a mother in front of her children on a highway, have shocked Pakistan in recent years.
Thousands of rapes are reported in Pakistan annually, but the conviction rate is less than 3% due to faulty prosecution and ambiguous laws, according to police statistics.
GNA