Lahore, May 22 (PTI) Police in Pakistan arrested six people in Punjab province on Sunday for allegedly murdering two Pakistani-origin Spanish sisters in yet another case of "honour killing", a brutal patriarchal practice prevalent in the country.

Arooj Abbas, 24, and Aneesa Abbas, 21, were allegedly tortured and shot dead in Nathia village of Gujrat district for refusing to take their husbands to Spain.

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District Police Officer (DPO) Gujrat Ata-ur-Rehman said the two sisters were allegedly killed by their brother and uncle for not complying as they were forcefully married within the family.

The two sisters wanted to separate from their Pakistani husbands, who were also their cousins, and were forcibly called from Spain to Gujarat, where they were strangled and shot dead on Friday night, police said.

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The arrested persons included Shehryar (brother), Muhammad Hanif (uncle), Qasid, Atiq, Hassan and Asfandyar, The Express Tribune newspaper reported on Sunday.

According to the Punjab Police spokesperson, a case of the incident has been registered while the investigation is being carried out from all angles, the report said.

The sisters, who had Spanish citizenship, returned to Pakistan from Spain on May 19, along with their mother Azra Bibi. On the night of May 20, the two sisters were shot dead in the house of their maternal uncle, Hanif alias Goga.

The police registered a case on the complaint of ASI Yasir Nadeem against seven suspects and two unidentified persons.

"The family created a story to convince them to come to Pakistan for a couple of days," said Gujrat police spokesperson Nauman Hassan.

"Preliminary investigations show this is a case of honour killing, but it is still developing and the investigation is ongoing," he was quoted as saying by The Express Tribune newspaper in a separate report.

The two sisters were married a year ago and now they want a divorce from their husbands. The sisters wanted to marry someone else in Spain and had been tricked into returning home with their mother, DPO Rehman said.

The police officer said when the two sisters refused to sign papers to enable their husbands to emigrate to Spain and demanded a divorce, a bitter argument broke out before the sisters were killed.

Azra Bibi, the mother of the victims, said she tried to protect her daughters but she was locked in a separate room.

The Spanish embassy in Pakistan could not be reached for comment on Saturday, the report said.

Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shahbaz has taken note of the murder of two sisters and sought a report from the Inspector General Police (IGP), it said.

Cases of honour killing are frighteningly regular in Pakistan, especially in areas close to the tribal regions in the north and west. Swathes of Pakistani society still operate according to strict codes of "honour" that radically undermine women's rights.

There were more than 450 honour killings last year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

In the past, women have been shot, stabbed, stoned, set alight and strangled for the charge of tainting their family's "honour".

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)