Daily Times

ROME: Police in Italy are searching for the body of an 18-year-old girl suspected to have been killed by her Pakistani family after she refused to marriage on their choice.

Identified as Saman Abbas, the teenager refused to abide by her parent’s demands to marry a cousin in Pakistan.

The girl’s parents, an uncle and two cousins are under investigation for murder, Lieutenant colonel Stefano Bove of the Carabinieri police said. They informed that all the five members had taken part in the heinous crime.

Bove said the police was inspecting “wells, irrigation canals and greenhouses” to find the remains of the girl.

Saman Abbas, although still a minor, had petitioned to social services to shift her to a shelter home and had moved there in November. She also reported her parents to police, but on April 11 returned to them.

Police had been searching for her since May 5, when officers visited her house and found nobody, triggering an investigation. Officers then discovered that the girl’s parents had left for Pakistan without her, and found images from a nearby security camera that confirmed their suspicions.

The images, captured a week earlier, identified five people leaving the house holding shovels, a crowbar and a bucket, and returning after about two-and-a-half hours.

The Carabinieri have identified the five as the family members suspected of murder. All are believed to have left Italy for Pakistan.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people took part in a solidarity rally for the missing girl on May 28, by the town hall of Novellara.

“Saman, tonight you are not alone and you will never again be alone,” Mayor Elena Carletti said in a video posted on local news website Reggioonline.