Four members of a family murdered in Skardu house

Four members of a family were murdered inside their house in Skardu, the private channel 24 News HD reported on Friday, without giving further details of the killings.

The report, published under the headline "Four of family murdered in their Skardu house", did not name the victims or give their ages. It did not say when the bodies were found, in which part of Skardu the house stands, or whether anyone has been detained. No motive was attributed to the police, and the outlet carried no statement from Gilgit-Baltistan Police or from any relative of the dead.

Skardu is the headquarters of the Baltistan division of Gilgit-Baltistan, and policing in the district is the responsibility of Gilgit-Baltistan Police. No official confirmation of the deaths was available in the report.

Because nothing beyond the death toll has been established in the published record, Skardu Times could not independently confirm on Friday the identities of the dead, the sequence of events inside the house, or how many people are suspected of carrying out the killings. This article will be updated if the police, the family or the district administration release details.

Under Pakistani criminal procedure, a killing of this kind would ordinarily be entered at the local police station as a first information report before investigation begins. The report did not say whether an FIR has been lodged, which police station is handling the case, or whether a post-mortem has been ordered.

Reports of multiple killings are rare from Gilgit-Baltistan, where violent crime makes up a small share of the cases registered each year, and a homicide involving an entire household in the divisional headquarters is unusual.

The 24 News HD report is the only account of the incident available to this newspaper. Readers should treat the bare fact of four deaths as reported by that outlet and not as officially confirmed.