Ten years after Qandeel Baloch, honour killings still haunt Pakistan

Ten years have passed since the brutal murder of social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch, who fell victim to an ‘honour’ killing orchestrated by her brother. Her killing shocked Pakistan and led to legal reforms that reclassified honour killings as crimes against humanity, prompting police to register such cases under Sections 302 and 311 of the Pakistan Penal Code. Despite the 2016 amendments to the law, the violence has not abated. In fact, it has grown more visible, more brazen. 

Patriarchy, sexism, rising misogyny, and toxic masculinity in Pakistani society are key drivers for persistence of the notions around “honour/dishonour” seen as residing in women’s bodies. According to Human Rights Watch, nearly a thousand women are murdered every year in Pakistan under the pretext of honour, a number that has remained stubbornly consistent despite legislative reform.

In July 2025, a horrifying video circulated on social media, capturing the execution of a young woman and man who had married against their families’ wishes. The couple, whose names were never released, were shot dead on the orders of a tribal jirga in Balochistan.

The footage was chilling: the woman, wrapped in a shawl, stood motionless as a man fired at her from close range. She remained standing after two shots, collapsing only after the third. Moments later, the camera revealed a bloodied man lying near her body. Gunmen continued to fire at both victims as they lay on the ground. The video sparked national outrage, with hashtags like #JusticeForCouple and #HonourKilling trending across Pakistan. In parliament, senators condemned the murders and demanded action against those who convened the jirga, warning that impunity for such parallel justice systems only emboldened further violence. The killings underscored the state’s failure to protect its citizens in under-governed regions like Balochistan, where tribal power structures fill the vacuum left by absent courts and ineffective policing.

But the violence was not confined to remote areas. Throughout 2025, honour killings continued to claim the lives of women across Pakistan, driven by deeply ingrained beliefs about family dignity and shame. On December 6, 2025, Karachi witnessed yet another tragedy: in the Gizri neighbourhood, 43‑year‑old Kulsoom and her eleven‑year‑old daughter Maryam were stabbed to death by her husband, Samiullah. Police described the double murder as an honour killing, another case in a long, unbroken chain.

The previous year had been equally grim. On July 31, 2024, nineteen‑year‑old newlywed Saba Iqbal, who had contracted a court marriage, was burned alive in Bahawalnagar. Her body was found outside a filling station in Haroonabad. Eight months later, her husband Ali Raza confessed to her family that he had set her on fire. Just days earlier, on July 28, 2024, Karachi saw another killing: twenty‑year‑old Shahzadi was axed to death by her maternal grandfather in Marfani Goth. She had married of her own free will in Jamshoro a year earlier. Her grandfather brought her back home under the guise of reconciliation, only to kill her inside the house.

Some victims tried desperately to escape their fate. A young couple from Bajaur District, condemned by a jirga for marrying against their families’ wishes, fled first to Lahore and then to Karachi, believing distance would save them. It did not. On October 2, 2024, gunmen found them in a crowded Lyari bazaar and shot them dead. No one intervened. No one testified. The man’s own relatives refused to collect his body, telling police he had deserved to die for “shaming” them.

Even those with education, status, and professional respectability have committed such killings with chilling conviction. In March 2024, on the outskirts of Karachi near Gulshan‑i‑Iqbal, respected physician Dr. Rafiq Ahmed Sheikh murdered his sixteen‑year‑old daughter and her seventeen‑year‑old boyfriend after discovering their relationship. He called the police himself to confess. From his comfortable cell in Malir Jail, secured by money and connections he expressed no remorse, only indignation that the boy’s family had not sent a marriage proposal. Prison officials acknowledge that he and his co‑accused sons would likely get away with it.

Pakistan’s struggle with honour killings has drawn global attention. Filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid‑Chinoy won an Oscar for her documentary A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, earning international praise for exposing a problem that has plagued Pakistan for generations. Yet the killings continue. In January 2025, Dawn reported another case that involved the Pakistani diaspora, where an immigrant family in Italy murdered their daughter for refusing to marry a Pakistani man chosen for her. She wanted to spend her life with her Italian boyfriend instead.

These cases, spanning provinces and social classes, reveal a single, devastating truth: despite legal reforms and public outrage, honour killings remain deeply embedded in Pakistan’s social fabric. These killings also persist because Pakistan’s legal system has long offered honour killers an escape route disguised as religious justice. Under earlier provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code Sections 309 and 310, the qisas and diyat laws, a victim’s family could forgive the killer, often in exchange for blood money. In honour killings, where the murderer and the victim’s heirs were often the same people, this meant families could simply forgive themselves. Section 306 went further, exempting parents who killed their children from retributive punishment altogether. “These provisions allowed murderers to go free,” explains Advocate Ali Barkat Baloch. “The killers, the heirs and the forgivers are often the same people.”

The mere suspicion of behaviour that could tarnish the family’s reputation can lead to violence, with these judgments often based on subjective perceptions rather than facts. Paradoxically, female relatives sometimes defend or even assist in carrying out these killings. Reforms in 2004 and 2005 attempted to close these loopholes but failed. Only after Qandeel Baloch’s murder in 2016 did parliament pass the Anti‑Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Amendment Act), mandating life sentences even when families attempted to pardon the perpetrator. The law was meant to strengthen prosecutions and increase conviction rates by making honour killings non‑compoundable state crimes that cannot be privately settled.

Yet horrific killings continued. In one especially harrowing case, a teenage couple who planned to elope were electrocuted to death by their families on the orders of tribal elders in Karachi in September 2017. Fifteen‑year‑old Bakht Jan and seventeen‑year‑old Rehman were tied to a charpai and subjected to electric shocks. “The innocent souls were tied to a rope bed and given electric shocks,” said the police officer who arrested several family members. “The girl was killed and buried first, followed by the murder of the boy the next day.”

The scale of the crisis remains staggering. HRCP data shows at least 894 honour killings across Pakistan in 2024, with Sindh and Punjab accounting for 80 percent of the deaths. In 2025, 690 such murders had already been documented, including 27 in Karachi alone. Convictions remain vanishingly rare: the Sustainable Social Development Organisation’s 2024 report found a conviction rate of just 0.5 percent.

The fact remains that the state’s complacency has allowed jirgas to flourish in areas beyond its writ. Instead of enforcing the law, the government has spent the past year weakening the judiciary and even considering reviving jirgas in former tribal districts. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has asked senior ministers to evaluate proposals to reintroduce these councils, including potential engagement with tribal elders and Afghan authorities. In doing so, the state risks legitimising the very structures that have sanctioned countless murders in the name of honour.