Pakistan’s Criminal Law (Amendment) (Offences in the Name or Pretext of Honour) Act 2016 was supposed to close the loopholes that let honour killers walk free. A new legal analysis argues that the law still fails on two fundamental levels: it never defines what an honour killing actually is, and its evidentiary rules don’t fit the reality of crimes committed inside family homes. The paper, which examines the law against comparative models, proposes specific statutory reforms to fix both problems.

The 2016 Act introduced a mandatory minimum life sentence for honour killings. But the phrase “killing in the name of or on the pretext of honour” was never defined in the statute. That leaves the determination entirely to judicial discretion — and Pakistani courts have exercised that discretion inconsistently.

Because perpetrators can simply deny an honour-based motive, they often get charged under ordinary Section 302 of the Pakistan Penal Code instead. Under that provision, the victim’s family — who are frequently the perpetrators or their relatives — can waive or compound the offence. So in practice, honour killing remains compoundable.

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The paper proposes a statutory definition that codifies the relational nexus between perpetrator and victim. It also recommends treating honour-based motive as an aggravating element.

The most contentious issue is the defence of grave and sudden provocation. Perpetrators consistently invoke it, arguing that the victim’s alleged moral or sexual transgression induced a sudden loss of self-control.

The UK abolished the defence of provocation in 2009 and replaced it with a narrower “loss of self-control” defence, which is explicitly excluded in cases involving sexual infidelity. The paper contends that honour killing falls within that exclusionary ground, since both stem from patriarchal values used to excuse violence. The proposed reform would statutorily bar the provocation defence in honour-related killings.

The practical effect of these gaps is that families who orchestrate these killings often control the legal outcome. Under the Qisas and Diyat provisions that preceded the 2016 reforms, the victim’s heirs could waive qisas or compound the offence by accepting compensation. In honour killings, those heirs are usually the perpetrators themselves or people with a vested interest in them.

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The 2016 Act barred the accused from acting as wali, but the family’s ability to pardon and trigger acquittal was only removed for the specific offence of honour killing — which, without a definition, is easy to avoid. The researchers argue that this creates a significant obstacle to justice.

They propose shifting the evidentiary burden. Honour killings are committed in secrecy, inside homes, by family members who are either complicit or actively participate. Crime scenes are cleaned or tampered with. Deaths are concealed as suicides or accidents. In this evidentiary vacuum, the conventional demand for direct, ocular evidence becomes untenable.

The paper advocates codifying a presumption of knowledge and explanatory burden within the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order 1984, modelled on Sections 117 and 118 of India’s Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023. Those provisions create rebuttable presumptions in cases of dowry death and abetment of suicide, shifting the burden to the accused once the prosecution establishes foundational facts.

Courts have shown cautious but increasing acceptance of this principle. In Saeed Ahmad v The State, the Supreme Court held that an accused’s failure to explain circumstances within his special knowledge — not reporting his wife’s death, not taking her to hospital, not participating in her last rites — constitutes an adverse circumstance alongside other corroborative evidence.

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The Lahore High Court’s Ayaz Adil judgment (2025) articulated a three-step evidentiary formula for honour killing cases, endorsing the “probability formula” in Article 2(4) of the QSO as a tool of evaluation, not a relaxation of the standard of proof. It is a step towards a more realistic approach to evidence.

The proposed reform would not displace the legal burden on the State. It would only shift the evidential burden to the accused once the prosecution establishes a prima facie case through circumstantial evidence and reasonable inferences. The standard is described as a “realistic chance at conviction,” falling short of beyond reasonable doubt but requiring a substantive evidentiary foundation.

The conviction rate in honour killing cases remains low, largely due to the systemic evidentiary deficit caused by family silence and evidence destruction. These reforms, the paper argues, are not merely procedural adjustments — they determine whether perpetrators of honour killings are held accountable at all.