The killing is the latest in a spate of more than 5,000 incidents since 2012 in which women have been killed.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Police in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have arrested a man is said to have shot his teenage daughter last week after photos appeared online showing a boy’s arm around her.

Kohistan district police officer Mukhtar Ahmed Tanoli told Al Jazeera that police had arrested the girl’s father, Arsala, “on charges of killing his own daughter.”

They also arrested the father’s brother and two cousins ​​who are accused of plotting the murder along with Arsala.

Police were informed of the incident on November 24 and retrieved the girl’s body from her home in Kolai-Palas district of Kohistan, a remote region 350 kilometers by road from the capital Islamabad.

According to the police report, photos circulating on Facebook early last week showed the girl and a boy, both from Kohistan, with their arms around each other.

Kohistan is an isolated, extremely conservative region where local traditions are often enforced by tribal councils called “jirgas,” which are known to hand out death sentences to women for “violations” of the tradition’s extreme interpretation.

In 2012, a video showed five women clapping while two men danced during a wedding ceremony. A local tribal council was convened and ordered those involved in the video to be killed.

At least three women in the video were killed.

Six men were sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 2019 five of them were acquitted on appeal.

Cannot claim Jirga

Tanoli said last week’s murder was different. “We cannot claim that this was due to a jirga that could have ordered the killing. That didn’t happen here,” he said.

He added that police believe the viral photos were digitally altered using images of another couple and that police have sought help from cybercrime officers of the Pakistan Federal Investigation Agency to trace the people behind the image alteration .

Nausher Khan, the father of the 17-year-old boy whose picture with the murdered girl was shared online, says he did not know that a tribal council ordered the killing but he fears for his son and his family.

“The police have now arrested the girl’s father as well as her uncle and cousins, but I fear that the girl’s family wants to take revenge by killing my boy,” Khan told Al Jazeera. “I sent him away to hide, but now I’m worried about my wife and five other children.”

Pakistani human rights organizations have raised the alarm against the rampant levels Femicide in the countrywith data showing more than 5,000 women have been killed since 2012.

The government has taken measures to tighten the law against such murders and increase the punishment life imprisonment In 2016, the killings continued.

In its 2022 report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 384 such killings were reported, more than 100 of them from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.