{"id":14607,"date":"2016-06-03T16:03:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/?p=14607"},"modified":"2016-06-03T16:03:23","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:03:23","slug":"death-is-the-consequence-of-denying-a-suitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2016\/06\/03\/death-is-the-consequence-of-denying-a-suitor\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Is The Consequence Of Denying A Suitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

19-year-old, Maria Sadaqat, was attacked in Murree, in her home by a group of men on Sunday and later died in hospital.<\/p>\n

The owner of the school where she worked as a teacher, Shaukat Mahmood has been arrested, alongside five other suspects who are in police custody. Maria Sadaqat allegedly turned down Mr Mahmood\u2019s son\u2019s hand in marriage.<\/p>\n

Similar attacks on women who decline marriage proposals are very common in Pakistan.<\/p>\n

Mr Mahmood was held in Rawalpindi, amongst three other men who were also arrested. Two others were taken into custody previous to these arrests.<\/p>\n

According to Maria Sadaqat\u2019s family, Mr Mahmood\u2019s son is already married with a child which is why they rejected the marriage proposal.<\/p>\n

The police recorded a statement from Miss Sadaqat in a hospital in Islamabad before she died.<\/p>\n

\"Maria<\/a>
Maria Sadaqat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She reported that she was beaten and covered in fuel before being set ablaze near the hill resort of Murree, near to the capital.<\/p>\n

She was reported to have 85% burns by local media reports.<\/p>\n

Violent behaviour against women is common in Pakistan, which is frequently associated with an alleged loss of honour, which is the case in Maria Sadaqat\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Many of these violent incidents are not reported as they take place within the family.<\/p>\n

In many instances, family members do not report due to the need to keep the family name out of the news, for fear of publicity. Many families prefer out-of-court settlements, which only gives more courage to young men who commit these acts.<\/p>\n

The attack on Miss Sadaqat occurred in the Punjab Province and was reported, regardless of the publicity of the family name.<\/p>\n

The Punjab Province recently passed a landmark law that criminalises all forms of violence against women.<\/p>\n

However, over 30 religious groups threatened to launch protests if the law was not revoked.<\/p>\n

The Council of Islamic Ideology, which counsels the government, proposed making it legal for husbands to “lightly beat” their wives, which also had a negative response.<\/p>\n

Religious groups have associated women’s rights campaigns with elevation of indecency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19-year-old, Maria Sadaqat, was attacked in Murree, in her home by a group of men on Sunday and later died in hospital. The owner of the school where she worked as a teacher, Shaukat Mahmood has been arrested, alongside five other suspects who are in police custody. Maria Sadaqat allegedly turned down Mr Mahmood\u2019s son\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":14608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}