LAHORE, Pakistan — The Pakistani police said Friday that they had arrested four more people in connection with the death of Farzana Parveen, a pregnant woman fatally beaten by her family in a so-called honor killing that has stirred outrage in Pakistan and across the world.
After an urgent appeal for action from the prime minister, police on Thursday arrested Parveen’s uncle, two cousins, and a driver employed by her family.
They are accused of participating in a crowd of about 30 men, said to have been led by her father and two brothers, that surrounded Parveen, 25, as she was bludgeoned with a brick outside the Lahore High Court building last Tuesday. Police arrested her father, Muhammad Azeem, in the hours after the killing.
The manner of Parveen’s death, before a large group of men on a busy street in a major city, has attracted global attention, highlighting both the brutality of honor killings and the apparent inability of the Pakistani police to protect vulnerable women.
Photos of her grieving husband, Muhammad Iqbal, hunched over a shawl that covered his wife’s bloodied body have fed the condemnation of honor killings.
New details that have emerged have suggested that money was also a major factor in her death and that her grieving husband, Muhammad Iqbal, 45, had killed his first wife to be with Parveen.