Youth killed : A teenager got murdered in the name of honor

The quiet village of Kharkai, tucked away in the lower Dir district of Kyber Pakhtunkhawa, a teen  named Karishma Bibi was executed last week. 

19 years old, Karishma Bibi was youthful, full of dreams and hopes, but she had no idea that her eyes won't be open anymore to see her dreams coming true. Bibi's mother was already died when she was an infant, meanwhile her father was working in Dubai and she was under the guardianship of her paternal Uncle Zor Zamin and cousin Gul bahar. 

Karishma's 'crime' was according to the local police records, was that she was standing outside of her house and was talking to a male neighbour. For this simple human interaction her male relatives opened fire, riddling her body with bullets before hastily burying her without traditional funeral prayers. They thought the mountains of lower Dir would hide their secret. They forgot that in 2026, the digital world does not allow the slaughter of women to remain a family secret. Thanks to local youth and human rights defenders who flooded social media with the truth, the state was forced to register a First Information Report under Section 311 of the Pakistan Penal Code_ a law that treats, honour killings as a crime against the state, preventing families from "forgiving" the killers. 

The perpetrators of this horror and shameful act will undoubtedly claim they were defending family honour and religious values. But as a journalists, we must call this what it is: absolute, religious hypocrisy. Meanwhile, Islam, a wide practicing religion in Pakistan places an extraordinary religious duty on Muslims to protect orphans but still most of honour killing in Pakistan is on basis of Islam. 

The lower Dir Police, led by DPO Bilal Farooq, have rightfully arrested the cousin, Gul Bahar, but the uncle remains a fugitive. Catching one killer is not enough. This case exposes a wider, systemic rot. Pakistan's parliament passes progressive laws in Islamabad, yet the conviction rates for honour killings remains an abysmal sub-two percent because local institutions treat these murders as private  family matters. Unit the state hunts down Zor Zamin with  the same urgency it reserves for the political dissidents, law are just useless ink on paper. True honour is not found in burying our women; it is found in hanging their murderers. 



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