A woman and a man were shot dead, allegedly by the former’s father and brother, in the Kolai Pallas area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kohistan district in an act of ‘honour’ killing, the police said on Thursday.

A first information report (FIR) was registered today at the complaint of Pallas police Station House Officer Javid Khan under Sections 109 (abetment), 302 (intentional murder) and 311 (Fasad Fil Arz or mischief on earth) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The FIR said that upon receiving information, police reached Bar Paro in Kolai Pallas and found two bodies lying in a pool of blood. It said the deceased were identified as Ubaidullah of Ghato, Sherakot, and Baloo Bibi of Bar Paro, who were allegedly shot dead by her father Angeel and brother Muhammad Islam.

It added that the two suspects fled the scene after committing the crime, following which the police had launched an investigation.

Click to see more

In November, a girl was killed allegedly by her father on the orders of a jirga in the Barsharyal area after social media pictures showed her and her friend in the company of two unrelated boys in their village, an act considered taboo in the area. The other girl was rescued by the police.

In October, police rescued an 18-year-old woman in the district after a jirga issued an honour killing decree for her after she was found to be in contact with a stranger over the mobile phone.

The woman had fled the area after the issuance of the jirga decree and sought protection at a police post before a magistrate recorded her statement and she was shifted to Darul Aman in Abbottabad.

A similar incident as the above had also occurred in the area a decade ago when a video of local girls cheering for a dancing boy in 2011 went viral. All five women in the video were allegedly killed, along with the boy’s four brothers, on the orders of a local jirga.

The alleged killings captured international attention, and then-Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry took suo motu notice of the incident.

Kohistan is a conservative and remote area where several “honour killings” have been reported in recent years.