LORALAI - Security forces arrested eight suspects over stoning to death a couple on charges of extramarital affair on the orders of a local Panchayat (jury) here on Monday.
Provincial Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said mufti and his son were also taken into custody. The incident took place at Hilly Kharo area of district Loralai where a married couple was charged with adultery recently. A local jury, without investigating the case, ordered that the man and woman should be stoned to death. Orders of the jury were carried out swiftly and both were buried without performing Islamic rituals.
The provincial government took notice of the incident after it was highlighted in the media. Bugti said that strict action would be taken against those responsible for the crime, adding that further investigations were being carried out.
Local officials told a foreign news agency on Monday that a tribal couple in Loralai had been stoned to death allegedly on the orders of a local cleric after being accused of having an extramarital affair.
Eight people have been arrested, including the cleric, for the suspected murders in the village of Manzkai, 150 kilometres from Quetta.
"Locals have told the authorities that the man and woman were stoned to death. Some people are also saying that they were stoned and later shot," senior local administration official Zulfiqar Durrani told AFP.
He said that witnesses have told authorities that the man and woman, both from a nomadic tribe and married to other people, were found guilty of ‘illicit relations’.
"The bodies of the executed man and woman will be exhumed and a post mortem will be performed to ascertain how they were killed," Durrani said.
Local tribal police official Abdul Latif Kakar confirmed the stoning, but cautioned that the full picture would emerge only once investigations are completed.
Hundreds of people are killed around the country each year in the name of defending family ‘honour’, but stonings are extremely rare.