A 40-year-old woman from the village of Kaboud-Gonbad in Pakdasht (Tehran
Province) was killed by her 70-year-old husband in their shared home. According to
reports, the perpetrator suffocated his wife using a blanket, then moved her body to the
bathroom and attempted to cut her wrist in order to stage the killing as a “suicide.”
The significant age gap between the couple, 30 years, often a result of forced marriages
or unequal power dynamics within families, is an important aspect of this case.
However, this dimension has been completely ignored in state media coverage.
The state-run IRNA news agency reported the incident only under the vague label of a
“family homicide,” without naming either the victim or the perpetrator. This approach
reflects an ongoing pattern among government-affiliated media: avoiding terms such as
“femicide” or “honor killing” and reducing gender-based killings to “family disputes” in
order to obscure the structural and misogynistic nature of such violence.
IRNA’s reporting makes no reference to the gendered dimension of the homicide, omits
the victim’s identity, and frames the crime solely as a generic “domestic killing.” Such
erasure of victims and concealment of systemic causes of violence against women are
part of an official information strategy that removes femicide from public and legal
scrutiny.
According to Khabar Online, Colonel Shahram Valikhani, the Pakdasht police
commander, stated that the case was initially reported as a “suspicious death” and
possible “suicide.” When police arrived, they found the woman’s body in the bathroom
with a cut on her wrist, but forensic investigation revealed signs of prior suffocation and
evidence of staging.
Neither the name nor the image of the victim has been released, another practice that
contributes to the normalization of violence against women and the concealment of its
structural and gendered roots.
The 70-year-old husband first claimed that after a “minor argument,” his wife went to her
room alone and took her own life. However, inconsistencies in his statements, the
presence of suffocation marks, and crime-scene reconstruction by forensic police
exposed the false narrative. The man ultimately confessed, explaining that after
suffocating his wife, he attempted to disguise the killing as a suicide by moving the body
and cutting her wrist.

This case is yet another example of gender-based, misogynistic killings rooted in
structural violence and patriarchy, killings that state-aligned media deliberately mask
under the vague label of “family homicide” to avoid social and political accountability. By
concealing the reality, these outlets portray women’s murders not as systemic violence,
but as “private matters.”

#SafetyForWomen

#WomenHaveTheRightToLive

#NoToViolenceAgainstWomen

#$TheIslamicRepublicIsResponsibleForWomensMurders

#NoToMisogynisticCulture

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