Over 900 Pakistani women were killed last year in the name of honour for allegedly shaming their families while nearly 4,500 others were the target of domestic violence, the country's top rights watchdog said in a report today.
"According to media monitoring and field reports from HRCP volunteers, at least 943 women were killed in the name of honour, of which 93 were minors," the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said in its report for the past year.
The reasons for the ‘honour killings’, as such murders are referred to in Pakistan, were ‘illicit relations’ in 595 cases and the ‘demand to marry of their own choice’ in 219 cases, the HRCP said in its 'State of Human Rights in 2011' report.
Seven Christian and two Hindu women were among the victims of honour killings.
The murderers in 180 cases were brothers of the victim and the husband in 226 cases. A majority of the women killed - 557 - were married.
Before being killed with firearms and blunt weapons, at least 19 women were raped while 12 were gang raped, the report said.
Quoting figures compiled by the NGO Aurat Foundation, the report said cases of domestic violence showed a marked increase in the first six months of 2011 as compared to the previous year, with 4,448 cases reported.
Abduction and kidnapping remained the most common crimes (1,137 cases), with murder (799 cases), and rape and murder (396 cases) being the second and third most commonly reported crimes.