Pakistan model’s kin held for honour killing

Qandeel’s (26) younger brother Muhammad Waseem was arrested in Dera Ghazi Khan district of Punjab Province late last night. He was later presented before media where he confessed that he drugged and strangled his sister. Waseem, 25, said that he killed her as she brought “dishonour to the Baloch name” due to risqué videos and statements that she posted on social media. 

“There were other issues as well...Like the Maulvi issue,” he said, in an apparent reference to a controversy surrounding Qandeel’s selfies with Mufti Abdul Qavi, 

which hit headlines in June. 

Her controversial pictures recently led to the suspension of Mufti Qawi’s membership from the Ruet-e-Hilal committee, a top religious body. “She wasn’t aware I was killing her. I gave her a tablet and then strangled her,” he said. The actor-cum-model was strangled to death in her house in Multan’s Karimabad area in the early hours on Saturday. Qandeel’s father, Muhammad Azeem, had lodged the FIR and named his two sons for killing her in Multan where she had come from Karachi to live with her parents on the occasion of Eid.

In his police complaint, Qandeel’s father said Waseem killed her as he was against her working in showbiz. The father alleged that Waseem had taken this extreme step at the behest of his brother Mohammad Aslam Shaheen. City police chief Azhar Akram said the younger brother fled after the crime to Dera Ghazi Khan with two of his friends.