MULTAN: A tribal council in a remote Pakistani village ordered a man to walk neck-deep through freezing water for 10 minutes to prove his son was innocent of stealing, officials said on Thursday. But the man named Khuda Baksh only lasted two minutes and was fined Rs 50,000 by the tribal elders at Tumman Khosa village in central Punjab, a local official said on condition of anonymity.
Dozens of people watched on Wednesday as the man was sent into a pond and told to walk 80 feet with his hands and feet tied and only his head above water, residents said. Baksh took the bizarre trial by ordeal on behalf of his son Tariq Khan to clear him of a charge that he had stolen money from a fellow villager. “We are aware of the incident and I have ordered an investigation,” local police chief Rai Naeemullah Bhatti said, adding that the authorities were trying to discourage such practices.
Tribal councils in deeply conservative rural Pakistan often make their own judgments in the absence of normal courts and policing. People in a central Pakistani town last month tied a woman and her lover to a tree and stoned them to death for allegedly dishonouring her family. |