[DAWN] IN recent days, following a tip from a discreet informant, two bodies were exhumed from a graveyard in Sherpao Colony, Karachi. A post-mortem examination conducted thereafter revealed that the two individuals had been subjected to intense torture in their final hours: they had been beaten, tied to a charpai and electrocuted until they died, and then promptly buried under the cover of the night.The bodies, it later transpired, belonged to two star-crossed lovers, both of them teenagers. As the police investigated further, it ended up unthreading the grisly details of a macabre tragedy. The young couple, it appears, had planned to elope, but before they could do so, their families found out. Initially, they decided to settle the matter amongst themselves, but a local jirga intervened, dismissed the settlement and ordered that the couple be killed instead. The parents dutifully obeyed. And all honour lost, was apparently regained.
If this sounds all too familiar, it is. This tragedy is as modern as it is ancient, as old as it is new. It is a story that we have heard countless times before, only rephrased, restructured and reordered: characters come and go, but the plot remains unchanged.