Parishti Project

Premeditation.

The Agreed Statement of Facts discloses that Aqsa’s murder was clearly premeditated. Mohammad announced his decision that Aqsa would need to be killed at a family met five days before the murder. Anwar Jan said she believed that Waqas and Mohammad were going to break Aqsa’s legs but not kill her straight away. 

Under Canadian law, a death that results from the commission of an unlawful act (assault) is a murder.

Group Complicity. 

The Parvez family conspired to lure Aqsa home to collect the “western clothes” that her Shazia and Irim had twice refused to deliver to Aqsa. After meeting with Aqsa at the Tahir residence Muhammad and Anwar Jan offered to rent a basement suite for Aqsa and to pay her a monthly allowance if she agreed to return home. On the day of the murder, Waqas picked Aqsa up at the bus stop on her way to school and persuaded her to come home to pick up her western clothes. The murder was not only planned by the group, but multiple people played active roles in trying to lure her home to be beaten and then to mislead the police about Waqas’ presence in the family home at the time of the murder.

Canadian criminal law requires the actus reus and mens rea to be present in the same person at the same time for a finding of guilt. This presents a problem in cases where the crime is instigated by one individual (Muhammad) potentially set up by another person (Shazia and Irim who both tried to lure Aqsa home to be beaten) and completed by another person (Waqas who murdered Aqsa) and covered up by 12 individuals who were aware of all the steps in the 

There are numerous problems with prosecuting crimes with group complicity including:

•   Inability to prosecute inchoate offenses. While Shazia and Irim may have intended to participate in an offense, by luring Aqsa home, they were unsuccessful in their attempt and luring Aqsa home is too remote a preparatory act to constitute an offence even if they believed she would be beaten when she returned home. (Shazia and Irim were guilty of obstructing the investigation after the fact but not prosecuted for it.)

•   Divided actus reus. It is not clear from the Agreed Statement of Facts how a planned beating turned into a murder and whether Muhammad played any role in the actus reus (other than planning and delegating it to Waqas). 

•   Divided mens rea. It is not clear from the Agreed Statement of Facts why Waqas agreed to participate in Muhammad’s plan. It is known that Muhammad used physical violence to compel his adult sons and Waqas was afraid of Muhammad. Although Waqas was 26 years old at the time of the murder, he still lived at home where Muhammad maintained strict control of his children and Waqas kept minor things (like an earring) secret from Muhammad out of fear. It is not clear whether Waqas agreed to participate in a beating or a murder and Waqas may have been acting under duress.

Community Approbation. 

Anwar Jan believed that Aqsa was going to be beaten and made no effort to stop the beating. Even after the murder, Anwar was recorded lamenting that Aqsa should have listened to her father, suggesting that Aqsa herself was the proximate cause of her own murder. Atishan opined that if a daughter of his behaved as Aqsa had he would have broken her legs. Shazia agreed that if she had behaved like Aqsa, she would have deserved to be killed. Shazia did not believe “whoever” killed Aqsa belonged in jail, in fact no one in the Parvez family believed that Aqsa’s murderer belonged in jail, and they conspired to mislead the police during the investigation of the murder. 

Community approbation serves a dual purpose in HBV: (1) it absolves the perpetrator of the social stigma of having committed a criminal act; and (2) it terrorizes other potential dissidents into compliance with the social expectations of the group because it becomes plain that such dissenters would find no supporters or safety within the group. The decision to delegate the murder to Waqas may have been a pragmatic one (since he was the only son who did not have children to consider), or it may have been a strategic one (because Waqas was himself trying to get out of an unhappy marriage that Muhammad had arranged for him). Involving Waqas in the planning and commission of Aqsa’s beating dealt with both Aqsa’s dissent and showed Waqas what was in store for him if he persisted in his own dissent.

Social Capital. 

Muhammad and Anwar Jan started pushing the hijab on Aqsa in 2006 when Aqsa started to show signs of rejecting the arranged immigration marriage, they intended for her. It was not something that Aqsa was accustomed to wearing and then abandoned. It was something new that was being forced on her, in part to isolate her from the friends that Muhammad and Anwar Jan felt were a bad influence on Aqsa. Aqsa wore the hijab when she left home in the morning and took it off when she got to school. Irim and Waqas were tasked with spying on Aqsa at school and reporting on Aqsa’s activities at the family.

Aqsa had a place to run when she left her family home because she had friends within the Muslim community whom she believed would understand her situation and help to keep her safe. Aqsa’s choice of the Tahir family was both discreet and inoffensive. Aqsa was staying with a female friend. There were no boys of her age in the household to cast aspersions on Aqsa’s character. And while Aqsa remained in the Tahir home, she was safe. It was when Aqsa’s own judgement failed her, and she trusted Waqas to keep her safe while she removed her belongings from the family home that Aqsa became vulnerable. 

It is a common practice in women’s shelters in Pakistan to dissuade women from returning to the families that they have fled because the act of fleeing becomes the justification for killing her. However, when a loved-one has been left behind and the safety of that loved-one is threatened women sometimes return to their families knowing that they will not be safe. When women do choose to return to their families against the advice of the shelter staff, it is a common practice to have the family sign an undertaking to keep her safe. 

It is a common practice on Canadian family law files to have a third safe person accompany the departing spouse when she returns to retrieve belongings that she left behind in the family home. This can be a trusted friend or a social worker, but often it is a police officer who can ensure that the departing spouse only takes what belongs to her, does not damage the property while she is inside, and ensures the safety of the departing spouse if the other spouse comes home. That kind of a service would have been useful to Aqsa had she known to ask for it, but there was no one to advise her of that…and she trusted her brother. 

Gendered Expectations. 

Aqsa was the youngest of eight children and all seven of her siblings had acquiesced to arranged first-cousin immigration marriages like the arrangement Aqsa was rejecting. While Waqas was also rejecting the marriage that he had already contracted, the cost to him of acquiescing was much lower than it was for Aqsa. 

None of the Parvez women worked outside the home. They were financially dependent firstly on their fathers and brothers and secondly on their own husbands. Forgoing an education and career meant financial dependency for Aqsa but not for Waqas who had the financial and social benefits that a career provides. Aqsa turned down an offer of a basement suite and an allowance because she wanted the education and the career that her parents found objectionable. 

Waqas also managed to carry on a relationship outside his marriage, which would have been much more dangerous for Aqsa to attempt after her own marriage. Infidelity by a husband does not endanger paternity certainty of the children of the marriage (and therefore the right of child support and the devolution of property rights) as does infidelity by a wife.

Patriarchy, Patrilineality, and Patrilocality. 

Though the three terms are formed from a common root, they each imply very different elements within family power structures. 

Patriarch. Muhammad Parvez was the most senior male member of the family, the patriarch. Most of the members of the Parvez family were descended from him through a shared blood line. 

Patrilocality. All Aqsa’s brothers continued to live with their parents after they were married while Aqsa’s sisters moved out with their husbands after they were married. 

Dispute Resolution. 

The Parvez family was referred repeatedly to culturally appropriate counselling which nonetheless failed to discover that the primary conflict in the family was between Aqsa’s desire to pursue an education and career and Muhammad’s plan to arrange her marriage. Counselling files are confidential, and it cannot be known for certain whether Aqsa disclosed this conflict to the counsellor, but it is unlikely that she did so because there are protective services that Aqsa could have accessed (such a foster care) that protect young women from being forced into unwanted marriages below the age of majority and without their consent. 

Barriers to Help Seeking.

After Aqsa’s murder, Shazia told a police officer that running away from home was against their religion and against their father. By this statement, Shazia discloses that the act of help-seeking becomes a public embarrassment to the family and therefore an escalation of hostilities. Even though the Aqsa was staying in the home of a female friend (with no suggestion that she was associating with boys) the fact that she was away from home without the consent of Muhammad was an indication that order had broken down in the Parvez family and therefore “just cause” for which Aqsa was killed. 

Protection Orders. 

In most DV cases, one or both parties to the dispute will seek protection orders requiring the other party to remain a safe distance away and avoid direct and indirect menacing behaviours like telephone calls and third-party contact. A prison sentence requires the offending party to remain within a confined space, and a protection order requires the victim to specify which defined spaces the offender is not permitted to attend. Seeking such an order would have required Aqsa to disclose where she was staying, and she opted instead for locational privacy. And even if she had sought a protection order, it would likely have named Muhammad whom she feared was going to kill her and not Waqas whom she trusted enough to go with him to retrieve her belongings.

Occam’s Razor. 

There is temptation to look for an exotic explanation for what is perceived as an exotic crime, but the reality is often more banal. Many of the newspaper stories about Aqsa’s murder focussed on Muhammad and Anwar forcing Aqsa to wear a hijab but fail to disclose rather than “abandoning” the hijab that she was accustomed to wearing, Aqsa was refusing to adopt the hijab that she had never worn before. The issue of Aqsa wearing a hijab did not arise until 2006 when Muhammad and Anwar imposed on Aqsa as a tool of social isolation to separate Aqsa from the western friends whom they believed to be a bad influence. At that time, Aqsa had already expressed a preference for completing her education and having a career and a rejection of the first-cousin immigration marriage as had already been arranged for the rest of Aqsa’s siblings and was then being discussed for Aqsa. 

It may be easier to believe that Muhammad decided that Aqsa had to die for failing to adhere to a strict religious belief system, but there is no evidence that Muhammad was a particularly religious man. It is also possible that Muhammad did it to enforce the spousal immigration marriages that he had arranged for all his children, each of which is worth $20,000 to $60,000 on the marriage market depending on circumstances of the sponsoring family and the ability of the sponsored family to pay the requested sum.