By Staff Reporter
QUETTA: Police on Thursday arrested the mother of a man suspected of killing his sister and another man in what authorities are calling an “honour killing,” a case that has reignited outrage over persistent vigilante violence in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province and prompted a forceful response from the country’s Senate.
The victims, Bano Bibi and Ehsanullah Samalani, were slain nearly two months ago in the Dagari area of Quetta district. The primary suspect, Jalal Satakzai, Bano Bibi’s brother, remains at large. A video that has spread widely on social media shows him firing shots at his sister, fueling public anger over the double murder.
“We are making all efforts to arrest the main accused,” a senior police officer said Thursday. Authorities detained Bibi Gul Jan, the mother of Jalal Satakzai, on Thursday, bringing the total number of arrests in the case to 16. The Serious Crimes Investigation Wing (SCIW) took her into custody and presented her before the Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC), which approved a two-day remand for further questioning.
Earlier this week, police arrested Sardar Sherbaz Khan Satakzai, the chief of the Satakzai tribe to which Bano Bibi belonged, and Basher Ahmed, remanding both to SCIW custody for 10 days.
In a video statement that emerged Wednesday night, Bibi Gul Jan sought to distance the tribal chief from the killings. “The decision to kill Bano and Ehsan was taken by her family according to Baloch traditions and customs, and Sardar Sherbaz Satakzai had no role in it,” she said.
Jan added that Bano Bibi, a mother of three sons and two daughters, was targeted in the name of family honour. The killings have cast a harsh spotlight on the enduring practice of “honour killings” in Balochistan, where individuals, typically women, are murdered by relatives for perceived breaches of familial or communal honour.
Despite laws criminalising such acts, enforcement remains spotty, particularly in tribal regions where traditional councils, known as jirgas, often hold sway. Human rights groups have repeatedly decried the gap between legislation and its application on the ground.
The Senate of Pakistan moved swiftly to address the incident, convening Thursday to denounce what it called a “brutal act of vigilante justice” carried out under a jirga verdict. In a resolution adopted with near-unanimous support, only the JUI-F party withheld its backing, lawmakers demanded an immediate and transparent investigation to hold all involved accountable, including those who convened or sanctioned the jirga.
The resolution, introduced by PPP parliamentary leader Senator Sherry Rehman, minced no words: “So-called honour killings are not ‘honourable,’ rather constituted murder under the law and must be prosecuted as such.”
It dismissed any defence of such crimes rooted in cultural, tribal, or traditional norms and condemned efforts to justify them under the banner of “ghairat,” or honour, labeling such arguments as victim-blaming.
Lawmakers emphasized that tribal justice systems cannot supersede constitutional protections or due process. The resolution pointed to past legislative efforts to curb honour crimes, such as barring settlements or leniency in such cases, but voiced alarm that weak implementation continues to undermine justice, especially in prominent cases involving women.
The Senate called on law enforcement to apply the Pakistan Penal Code rigorously, without compromise, and urged the Ministry of Law and Justice and the Ministry of Human Rights to examine gaps in existing laws on honour crimes and propose concrete reforms. “This premeditated act of vigilante murders constitutes an abhorrent crime; it is a gross violation of human rights, the Constitution and the laws of Pakistan,” the resolution stated.
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