Image copyright AFP Image caption Rights groups say honour killings are on the rise in Pakistan 
 
 The bodies of a teenage Pakistani couple feared murdered in an "honour killing" bear marks suggesting they were electrocuted, police say. 
 
 Officials exhumed the bodies of Bakht Jan, 15, and her boyfriend Rehman, 17, a month after they were buried. 
 
 Doctors, police and a magistrate were present at the graveside in Karachi. Post-mortem results are awaited. 
 
 Police say the couple were planning to elope but their families found out and tribal elders ordered them killed. 
 
 Death by electrocution is almost unheard of in so-called honour killings in Pakistan, says the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad. The BBC reported a suspected case in the Indian capital Delhi in 2010. 
 
 Four people, including the fathers of the dead Karachi couple, have been arrested. Police are trying to trace the whereabouts of the head of the tribal council (or jirga). 
 
 District police head Rao Anwaar told the media that police had been alerted to the killings and burials by an "informer". 
 
 He said the bodies exhumed at Mauladad graveyard in Sherpao Colony on Wednesday had marks on the arms, chest and legs that indicated electrocution. 
 
 "There were visible signs of electric shock and torture on both bodies," Civil Hospital Karachi Additional Police Surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi confirmed, Dawn newspaper reports. 
 
 Human rights groups say so-called honour killings are on the rise in Pakistan. Most victims are women who are not allowed to liaise or contract marriage with a man without approval of their families. 
 
 Image copyright Zia Ur Rehman Image caption Police exhumed the bodies of the two teens to establish a cause of death 
 
 Those involved in this case belong to the Pashtun Safi tribe from the north-western tribal region of Mohmand. 
 
 Zia Ur Rehman, a reporter for The News newspaper, which broke the story on Saturday, told the BBC that the families had reached a settlement in accordance with their tribal traditions. 
 
 "Under the settlement, the couple were to wed and the boy's family would give the hand of two of its women in marriage to two men of the girl's family as the price of honour. 
 
 "But a jirga called to endorse this settlement on 15 August rejected it and ordered the couple to be killed as a lesson to others." 
 
 Police officer Aman Marwat told the BBC that the relatives arrested "said that both the victims were drugged and then given electric shocks after being tied to a cot". 
 
 He said that Bakht Jan left her home secretly on 14 August, but the family found her hours later at a nearby house waiting for Rehman, who had not yet arrived. 
 
 "The girl was killed on 15 August, and the boy was killed the next day," police officer Marwat said. 
 
 Members of the tribal council were not contactable. Most are thought to be in hiding. No family members were available to comment. 
 
 Nearly 1,100 women were killed in Pakistan in 2015 by relatives who believed they had dishonoured their families, according to an April 2016 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. ||||| The bodies of a teenage couple in Karachi feared to have been murdered by their families after they wished to contract a free-will marriage were found bearing electrocution and torture marks following a post-mortem examination on Wednesday, officials said. 
 
 The bodies of the girl (15), and the boy (17), were exhumed from the Mauladad graveyard in Sherpao Colony in the presence of Azhar Ali Kalhoro, a judicial magistrate, and a team of doctors and police officials. 
 
 Civil Hospital Karachi Additional Police Surgeon Dr Qarar Ahmed Abbasi confirmed that "there were visible signs of electric shock and torture on both bodies." 
 
 Shah Latif Town Police Investigating Officer (IO) Ghulam Asghar Shaikh told Dawn that the girl and boy fled their homes on Aug 14 and stayed at the home of a relative in Sherpao Colony as they intended to marry of their own will. The relative, however, informed the parents of both victims, who then took them away. 
 
 After the development, a 30-35 person jirga was held, presided over by a local tribal elder identified as Sartaj, the IO said. 
 
 Following the jirga, the girl was electrocuted at around 11pm on Aug 15, while the boy was electrocuted around 3am on Aug 16, the IO added. 
 
 Police got wind of the case through an informant and subsequently filed a first information report on behalf of the state, after which four accused ─ the fathers and uncles of the victims ─ were arrested on Aug 21. 
 
 IO Shaikh said the accused, who had confessed to the crime, claimed to repent killing the children, alleging they were under the pressure of the jirga which urged them to murder the pair in order to to protect the 'honour' of their tribe. ||||| Pakistani police escort blindfolded suspects accused of killing and setting fire to a teen girl to a court in Abbottabad on Thursday. (Shakeel Ahmed/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 More than a dozen leaders of a small village in northwestern Pakistan were arrested Thursday and charged with burning a teenage girl to death because she helped one of her friends elope, security officials said. 
 
 The crime, which is renewing attention on Pakistan’s horrific record of protecting women and children from abuse, took place on the outskirts of Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 
 
 Khurram Rasheed, police chief for the northern district of Abbottabad, said Thursday that the body of Ambreen Riasat was found in a burned van in the tourist resort of Donga Gali on April 29, the Associated Press reported. Her exact age was in dispute. 
 
 A graphic photo of the teenager’s charred remains quickly circulated online. It appeared as though the girl’s arms had been bound before she was set on fire. 
 
 Initially, police suspected that she may have been raped by a scorned boyfriend or as part of a family dispute. But Saeed Wazir, the regional police chief in Abbottabad, said Thursday that the killing was a “pre-planned act” involving 14 village leaders. Wazir said the entire village council had sanctioned the act to send a message to other minors. 
 
 “They said she must be burnt alive to make a lesson for other girls,” he said. 
 
 In an act of defiance against Pakistan’s strict Islamic and paternal customs, Wazir said, the victim had helped one of her friends secretly marry her boyfriend. The bride “didn’t obey her father’s will and did a love marriage at court with a guy,” he said. 
 
 After the bride’s father found out, he requested that village elders investigate. In many parts of Pakistan, women and girls are expected to receive their father’s consent before marrying. 
 
 The village elders called a meeting, which is referred to as a Jirga. Under Pashtun culture in Pakistan and in neighboring Afghanistan, such gatherings are often held to try to reach consensus on how best to resolve local disputes. At times, the meetings also become a form of street justice. 
 
 According to Wazir, the village elders investigating the marriage quickly discovered that the victim had helped her friend evade her father’s will. The elders decided the victim needed to be punished for not disclosing her role in the marriage. 
 
 Several men then dragged the teenager out of her house and tied her into the van, Wazir said. 
 
 “Despite the requests and pleas from her parents, villagers forcibly brought her out and set her afire while roping her to the seat of the vehicle,” he said. 
 
 Both the leader of the Jirga and the father of the newlywed girl were arrested, Wazir said. A dozen other men who participated in the Jirga also were charged, he added. 
 
 It was not immediately clear whether the new bride or her husband were punished. 
 
 The case represents a troublesome expansion of mob-like tactics that women can face in Pakistan when they disobey their parents or extended family members. 
 
 According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 8,694 girls and women have died in so-called honor killings here between 2004 and 2015. Those crimes involved revenge killings for dishonoring a family, village or local custom. 
 
 About one-fourth of those cases involved the death of a minor. Although most common in remote areas, honor killings still occur in Pakistan even in larger, more progressive cities. The problem was highlighted recently in the Oscar-winning film “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness.” 
 
 The documentary profiles a 18-year-old woman who was beaten and shot by her father and uncle in Punjab province after she married a man against their wishes. The woman, Saba, survived. Her father and uncle were arrested but later freed, according to HBO Documentary Films. 
 
 After he saw the film, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to end honor killings. 
 
 Earlier this year, Sharif’s political party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, pushed through a women’s rights bill in Punjab province. The legislation, strongly opposed by the religious community, establishes a 24-hour domestic abuse hotline and network of shelters offering housing, first aid and counseling for women. 
 
 Still, a horrific wave of abuse continues. 
 
 On Sunday, Punjab police arrested a man and charged him with killing his wife, who was seven months pregnant, the Express Tribune newspaper reported. Using a club, the man apparently beat the woman to death after she refused to allow him to take a second wife. 
 
 Also in Punjab over the weekend, a man tossed acid onto a 37-year-old woman, resulting in burns over 30 percent of her body. Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported that the woman’s nephew is the main suspect. The man apparently wanted to marry one of the woman’s daughters – his cousin — but was refused. 
 
 “He was annoyed with his maternal aunt for turning down his marriage proposal,” Azhar Akram, a police officer in Multan, told Dawn. 
 
 Craig reported from Kabul. 
 
 Read more 
 
 Eight years after eloping with lover, Indian woman allegedly burned alive by relatives in ‘honor killing’ 
 
 If a husband beats his wife in Pakistan, can she flee? Maybe not. 
 
 Oscar victory spotlights Pakistan’s grim culture of violence ‘ 
 
 Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
– Authorities believe a teen couple murdered last month in Pakistan was killed by electrocution—an extremely rare method of death in so-called honor killings, the BBC reports. The bodies of a 15-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy were exhumed from a grave site in Karachi, and a postmortem examination was conducted Wednesday, according to Dawn. Authorities say marks on the victims' arms, chests, and legs indicate they were killed by electrocution. Four people—the fathers and uncles of the victims—have been arrested in connection with the murders. Authorities say the four have confessed to killing the teens and claim they were pressured by tribal elders to do so in order to protect the honor of the tribe. Authorities say the couple, who sought to marry, ran away from home Aug. 14 but were informed on by a relative. The News reports the two families tried to settle the matter themselves, with the girl's family agreeing to an offer of two girls for marriage and a cow from the boy's family in exchange for the victims' marriage. But one tribal elder reportedly quashed the deal, telling the families they must kill their children to prevent such behavior in the future. Police are currently looking for the tribal elder. Authorities say the girl was electrocuted Aug. 15 and the boy Aug. 16. The bodies were buried in the middle of the night. The family members were arrested Aug. 21. Advocacy groups say honor killings are increasing in Pakistan with women being the most frequent victims. (Five teens in Pakistan were allegedly killed for the crime of clapping and dancing.)