Qandeel Baloch’s brother, Waseem Azeem, committed the so-called honor killing for “family honor”, police said. Despite Qandeel being a “family breadwinner” Azeem found her actions “unbearable” and even says if he didn’t kill her he was considering committing suicide to end the embarrassment he was feeling on behalf of his entire family. “Murdering her was better than committing suicide so I went with the former plan”.
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The city police chief said the authorities will charge Waseem with honour killing and seek “maximum punishment”.
Justifying how Qandeel had been ” dishonouring” the family’ reputation, her brother isn’t guilty of what he did. It’s truly heartbreaking. It was her parents who alerted police that one of Baloch’s six brothers had killed her. Prior to her killing, Baloch posted this powerful message online: As a women we must stand up for ourselves.
“The murder has left many questions about the plight of women in Pakistan”, wrote the Daily Times. I killed her around 11.30pm on Friday night when everyone else had gone to bed.
Although Baloch received frequent threats, Al Jazeera report that she had “appealed to the interior ministry to provide her with security for protection” prior to her death.
Arrangements were being made to send Qandeel’s body to her hometown of Shah Saddardin in Dera Ghazi Khan for burial. Baloch, whose real name was Fauzia Azeem, had a huge social media fanbase, with 40,000 Twitter followers and more than 700,000 on her official Facebook page.
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Qandeel was a household name in Pakistan, universally followed like Kim Kardashian West on social media, and sometimes just as controversial. Her brother, arrested a day later after her father filed a police complaint against him for the killing, appeared in court briefly Sunday ahead of another hearing set for Wednesday.
