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The newborn baby girl named Jannat, which means “heaven” in Urdu, was shot five times on Monday at her home in the city of Mianwali and died instantly, police said. The suspect, who has been identified as Shazaib Khan, allegedly entered the house and demanded his wife hand over the baby before shooting Jannat dead. A relative of the baby said her father was enraged when his first-born child was a girl as he had wanted a boy.
Hidayatullah Khan, the girl’s maternal uncle, lodged a formal police complaint against the father who escaped the house after the murder.
He told the Dawn newspaper: “A baby girl was born… he was infuriated.”
Mr Khan said the suspect had not returned to the house since his wife had given birth to Jannat and that he had refused to accept her.
The baby’s grandfather said the suspect threatened family members who were also gathered in the house with the gun and said he would shoot anyone who came near him.
He demanded his wife give him the baby girl.
Mr Khan said: “The suspect took the girl into his hands and shot her dead.”
Police said the autopsy found that the baby had been hit with five bullets and would have been killed instantly.
The brutal murder has sparked outrage in Pakistan, where pictures of the baby moments after her death and later her funeral were shared online.
One Twitter user Fatima Suhail said: “And still they ask what are women’s rights? Why we need women’s rights? Why is women’s day celebrated? Why was she denied the right to live?”
Another user Tehseen Qasim called the muder “beyond barbaric, brutal and vicious.”
While another Twitter user, Misbah Munir, wrote: “I’m disgusted to the core. I feel terribly for the mother. Look at the beautiful daughter she had. Women lead the world, it’s 2022 FFS.”
Aurit Azadi March, a women’s collective that holds yearly rallies against violations of women’s rights in Pakistan, said the incident highlighted the reality of the treatment of women and girls in the country.
Commenting on the eve of International Women’s Day when news of the murder broke, the group tweeted: “Right before the international working women’s day a seven day old little girl was killed by her own father because he wanted his [first-born] to be a son in Mianwali.
“We need to wake up to the reality of this country & fight against such injustice & oppression.”
Pakistan is one of the poorest performing countries in the world in terms of gender equality.
The World Economic Forum’s 2021 Gender Gap Index revealed the country to be in 153 position out of a total of 156, with Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan the only countries found to be worse than Pakistan for gender equality.
Gender-based violence has worsened in recent years, according to rights groups, with a number of recent high profile cases drawing attention to the issue in recent months.
An appeals court in Lahore acquitted Muhammed Waseem for the 2016 murder of his sister, social media star Qandeel Baloch, last month after he was pardoned by his parents under Islamic law.
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Waseem had originally faced life in prison. He said he strangled his sister to death because her behaviour brought dishonour on the family.
The case of Noor Mukadam, the daughter of a former diplomat who was raped and beheaded in Islamabad last July by a man who held her captive for days, has also sparked outraged.
Although her killer, Pakistani-American Zahir Jaffer, received a death sentence last month activists have said the trial was characterised by “victim blaming”.
Rights groups in Pakistan also say that female infanticide is widespread.
Over the past two years, Reuters reported that the majority of more than 500 bodies of infants found dumped in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, were girls, according to a social welfare charity in the southern city.
There have been a number of high-profile cases of fathers in Pakistan killing their daughters because they wanted a son.
In 2015, Irshad Ahmed killed his three young daughters – seven-year-old twins Chashman and Aman and five-year-old Fiza – at the family home in Chak Jumra town. His wife said he had considered his daughters to be a burden on the family.
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