Dowry deaths in India no longer provoke the public anger they once did, despite thousands of women’s lives still being lost every year, according to new research.
The killings – women who are murdered or driven to suicide following dowry disputes between families – have also faded from political debate, despite an increase in cases.
In 2022, there were 6,516 dowry deaths in India compared with 1,841 in 1988, according to the paper.
The murder of an interfaith couple and the arrest of the woman’s brothers by the police for the alleged crime has shocked a small village in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state where residents have lived in harmony for years.
The bodies of 19-year-old Kajal, a Hindu, and 27-year-old Mohammad Arman, a Muslim, were found buried near a riverbank on the outskirts of Umri village on 21 January.
Police said they were beaten to death with a spade two days earlier, allegedly by Kajal’s three brothers, who have been arrested. They are in custody and have not commented on the killings.
An Afghan national has been charged with the first-degree murder of his wife after he allegedly committed an honor killing in Washington state over the belief she was having an affair, local media reported, citing the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Sayed Sadat, 37, of Auburn, called police to his home on the morning of November 23, where he was said to have confessed to killing 43-year-old Geety Sadat.
Last May, two brothers allegedly bound their 18-year-old sister in packing tape, gagged her, and drowned her in a swamp. This was an honour killing, motivated by what the girl’s brothers saw as her ‘westernisation.’ During the trial last week, WhatsApp messages revealed that the family’s main grievances were the fact that she had refused an arranged marriage, had a boyfriend, and had stopped wearing a headscarf. “There is no other solution,” one of the brothers wrote in a message. The girl’s own mother said that she was “a disgrace to the family and deserves to die” and should be “wrapped in a shroud.” In a secretly recorded conversation, one brother said he believed the family had been humiliated by the girl’s behaviour, and the only way out was her death.
In Pakistan, hundreds of women are killed every year after being accused of “dishonoring” their families.
Fattu Shah is a remote village in the north of Pakistan’s Sindh province. The drive from the nearest city, Ghotki, takes more than an hour. The road narrows as it cuts through cotton fields and winds around clay-brick houses scattered across endless stretches of farmland.
It’s a journey Aisha Dharejo has made countless times. For the past 15 years she has been researching what locals call “the graveyard for dishonored women.”
“Each grave reveals the story of a woman that has been silenced,” Dharejo told DW.
Horrifying moment woman is executed over her choice of husband before the groom is also shot dead in double honour killing that has shocked Pakistan
A young couple have been brutally executed in broad daylight in Pakistan after her family complained she had married without her family’s blessing.
The horrifying moment was captured on video and posted online, triggering national outrage.
The sickening footage, which quickly went viral across social media over the weekend, shows the man and woman gunned down at close range as onlookers watch in chilling silence.
Highly Graphic & Heartbreaking.
Reportedly she married for love & Jirga ordered her death.
In broad daylight in #Balochistan, a daughter was gunned down surrounded by heartless monsters.
Cold blooded murder carried out as cowardly eyes watched in silence. If the Govt has even a… pic.twitter.com/G7nEqGKWOI— Riaz Ali Turi (@RiazToori) July 20, 2025
A teenage girl sobbed as she told a court how she feared for her life as her own father choked her during an alleged ‘honor killing’.
Fatima Ali, 18, was giving evidence against her parents Ihsan Ali, 44, and mother Zahraa Subhi Mohsin Ali, 40, at their attempted murder trial on Tuesday.
The couple are accused of trying to strangle their daughter outside Timberline High School in Lacey, Washington, on October 18 last year.
Sara Sharif’s father had his neck and face cut in prison as he begins a life sentence for her murder, according to reports.
Urfan Sharif was allegedly jumped by two inmates in his cell at HMP Belmarsh armed with the lid of a tuna tin on New Year’s Day, The Sun reported.
The child killer, 43, is not believed to have needed hospital treatment.
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A Somalian refugee who murdered his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend last year in an ‘honour killing’ has been jailed for life by a Swedish court.
Saga Forsgren Elneborg, 20, was found strangled to death at her home in the city of Örebro in April 2023 in a case that shocked the Scandinavian country.
Prosecutors claimed that her 22-year-old boyfriend Mohamedamin Abdirisek Ibrahim decided to murder her rather than face the shame of telling his Muslim family that his girlfriend – believed to be half Thai, half Swedish and Christian – was expecting his baby.
h/t kiki9
The number of so-called “honour-based” crimes, associated with some Islamic cultures, has risen by over 60 per cent in England over the past two years, according to an analysis of police data.
This is the 63-year-old Illinois father who shot dead his wife and three daughters during ‘an argument’ at their home in Tinley Park on Sunday.
Maher Kassem has been charged with three counts of murder for killing wife Majeda and daughters Zahia and Halema, 25, and Hanan, 24.
Friends say the family were devout Muslims and Palestinian activists. Zahia, who also went by Zee, had recently visited Mecca.
Their mother Majeda devoted her life to ‘family and religion’, according to a fundraising site dedicated to completing a mosque in Mali in the family’s memory.
Police in Pakistan on Monday arrested a man for shooting his teenage daughter dead, after she appeared with boys in a photo uploaded to social media, in another incident of an honour killing.
The girl, said to be aged around 16 or 17, was fired at multiple times from a close range inside her family home in the northern town of Kohistan on Friday, local police chief Mukhtiar Ahmed said.
Two recent (and despicable) homicides in context.
Two recent and rather unnatural atrocities underscore the murderous hate that Islam mandates for any and all who are perceived to defy its—or those who associate themselves with its—authority.
On Aug. 13, in France, a 25-year-old Muslim man beheaded his own 60-year-old father with a knife. When police arrived on the scene, the defiant murderer tried to attack them while crying Islam’s triumphant war-cry, “Allahu Akbar,” thereby establishing his jihadist frame of mind.
The trial of the father who authorities believe to have murdered his teenage daughters in a 2008 ‘honor killing’ began Tuesday after Monday’s jury selection.
The prosecution is not seeking death penalty against Yaser Abdel Said, 65, but he would automatically receive a life sentence if convicted.
The Egyptian-born cab driver who lived with his family just north of Dallas, Texas, allegedly shot to death his daughters, 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina, in his taxi after telling them they were going out to eat on New Years Day 14 years ago.
‘Help, my dad shot me! I’m dying,’ Sarah could be heard in a 911 call she managed to make after she was shot. Investigators said Amina was killed instantly.
Two sisters with dual Pakistani and Spanish citizenship were allegedly killed by their husbands, uncle and brother in a so-called “honour” killing a day after they were tricked into travelling to Pakistan.
Aneesa Abbas, 24, and Arooj Abbas, 21, were strangled and shot dead on Friday after arriving in the eastern city of Gujrat with their mother, Azra Bibi.
It is understood that, on arrival in Pakistan, the sisters were pressured to help their husbands, who they were forced to marry last year, apply for spouse visas so they could travel to Europe.
