Mohammad Ramzan was working the night shift at a cement plant near Karachi when a call came from home. His 20-year-old daughter, Khalida Chandio, had been shot dead in her native village in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, The Guardian reports.

Back home, Ramzan and his wife Nabul are trying to make sense of what happened. Nabul can barely hold back her tears. She says their daughter was taken out of the house under cover of darkness and killed just a few hundred meters from their doorstep.

The killing was filmed and quickly spread across social media. The helpless parents saw the footage too.

“Her screams still ring in my ears,” says Nabul. “We couldn’t save her.”

According to police, Khalida was killed after she was declared “kari” — a Sindhi term used to accuse a woman of an “illicit relationship.” This is the label most often used by perpetrators to justify so-called “honor killings.”

Investigators say the murder was carried out by Khalida’s grandfather and maternal uncle on the direct orders of a tribal elder. Three suspects have already been arrested, and police are searching for a fourth. The case is being prepared for trial.

“If they thought my daughter had done something wrong, they should have handed her over to the police,” says 55-year-old Ramzan. “She would be alive today. She would be with us or in a shelter.”

Five years ago, Khalida married her cousin. But at the end of last year, about five months before the tragedy, her husband, who worked at a factory in Karachi, simply did not return home. Unable to find him, Khalida went back to live with her parents in the village of Tando Masti in Khairpur district, about 450 kilometers from Karachi.

According to investigators, on the night of April 10, male relatives and fellow villagers accused the young woman of having a relationship with another man. The accusation was brought before local elders at a jirga — a tribal council — where Khalida was officially declared kari. After that verdict, three men dragged Khalida from the house and killed her.

Pakistan’s courts banned jirgas from issuing rulings in criminal cases long ago, but human rights advocates say these informal tribal assemblies still wield enormous power in rural areas of Sindh province.

Grim statistics and selfish motives

Khalida’s death is only part of a vast system of violence against women accused of “dishonoring the family.” According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and the rights group Sindh Suhai Sath, 112 “honor killings” were recorded in Sindh alone between January 1 and June 20 of this year.

Based on police data, the HRCP documented at least 470 such killings nationwide in 2025, including 126 in Sindh. Rights advocates stress that the real numbers are much higher: in remote areas, deaths are often not reported at all or are passed off as suicides and accidents.

Representatives of Sindh Suhai Sath note that in 2024 alone, the bodies of 30 unidentified women were recovered from the Sukkur Barrage canals. Activists are convinced that many of them were victims of “honor killings.”

Asad Raza, deputy inspector general of police who has served as police chief in several districts, explains that “honor killings” are rooted in a deeply patriarchal system in which women are seen as the property of men.

Moreover, he says, the label kari is often used as a pretext for settling property disputes.

“A woman may be declared ‘kari’ not because of evidence, but because it is a convenient excuse to kill her in order to seize land, inheritance, or extract compensation in a tribal conflict,” Raza notes.

The same patriarchal attitudes often hinder the investigation itself.

“The victim is a woman. The accused is a man. Those making the accusations are men. The elders making the decision are men. And often the investigator is also a man, raised in the same environment,” the police official says.

Lawyer Shazia Nizamani, who represents victims’ families, adds that it is extremely difficult to bring a case to court when the accused is a close relative. Witnesses refuse to testify, and families come under intense pressure to withdraw their complaints.

A graveyard without names and a life of constant fear

Khalida was buried in her native village. But just 80 kilometers away lies the remote Fattu Shaheed cemetery, popularly known as Karian-jo-Kabristan — a graveyard for women declared “kari.” Dozens of crumbling, nameless graves stretch deep into the dusty desert ground.

Locals say burials there usually take place at night, and gravestones are never placed on the graves. No one dares speak on camera — people are terrified of retaliation from powerful feudal landlords and elders.

Not everyone accused manages to survive, but some do manage to escape.

Shahzadi, a 35-year-old teacher whose name has been changed, fled her native village after marrying for love against her family’s wishes. A jirga sentenced her and her husband to death, forcing the couple into hiding. With their three children, they have spent several years moving from one rented apartment to another, concealing their real names.

“I don’t know if I’ll be alive tomorrow,” she admits. “Every knock at the door makes me think they’ve finally found us. I no longer have any place where I can feel safe.”

In May this year, after a young couple’s wedding in Jacobabad district, armed men burned more than 100 homes in the groom’s village. The case starkly showed how disputes over “honor” can escalate into collective punishment of entire communities.

“This is not honor. This is cruelty without punishment.”

Pakistani columnist and sociologist Nasir Memon stresses that such killings have nothing to do with “honor” — they are purely about absolute control over women and the denial of their rights.

“Karo-kari is not an ‘honor killing,’” he concludes. “It is unchecked brutality carried out without any fear of the law.”

HRCP chair Asad Iqbal Butt sees what is happening as a direct failure of the state: “If the state had ensured the rule of law and fulfilled its duty to protect women, hundreds of these lives could have been saved.”

And in the village of Tando Masti, Nabul continues to mourn her slain daughter.

“People say time heals pain,” the mother says quietly. “But how can a mother forget that her daughter was killed? I live with this pain every single day.”