The shield of 'honour'

Bilal sat in a Lyari police station in Karachi last October, explaining why he'd murdered four women in his family.

- BY ALI OUSAT Illustration by Radia Durrani

It wasn't about honour, going by what he told investigators. His girlfriend wanted her name on a house deed. His mother refused. His sisters mocked him on TikTok. So, he killed them all — his mother Shamshad, sisters Madiha and Ayesha, and his nine-year-old niece — then threw the dagger into the sea.

“He tried to frame it as honour,” says Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) for Karachi’s District South Arif Aziz, who investigated the case. “But it was about property and control,” he continues. “His family was modern and powerful, unwilling to accept male domination,” the investigator tells Eos.

According to Bilal’s charge sheet, he'd watched the Indian crime series Crime Patrol to learn how to avoid leaving evidence. The case is still in court.

Police say Bilal’s case reveals a disturbing evolution: honour is now a legal shield for murder driven by property disputes, male insecurity and the rage of patriarchy losing ground. Some would claim it always has been.

THE NOT-SO-SAFE HAVEN

Two years before Bilal’s rampage, a young couple from Bajaur District, in Pakistan’s tribal northwest, fled to Karachi after marrying against their families’ wishes. They’d survived a jirga [local court of elders] that had ordered their deaths. They changed cities — first Lahore, then Karachi — believing distance would save them.

On October 2, 2024, gunmen found them in a crowded Lyari bazaar and shot them dead. No one intervened. No one testified.

“Who will chase the killers to Bajaur?” remarked one official at the Napier police station, in whose jurisdiction the murder had taken place.

The man’s relatives refused to collect the bodies, the station house officer (SHO) of Napier police station, Fida Marwat tells Eos. “They said it’s good he was killed and that he had shamed them,” he adds.