Unresolved dispute: Four arrested for beating up women

Maitla men raid the house looking for relative who had married against their will.

RAHIM YAR KHAN:

Four men of a Maitla family were arrested on Monday on charges of breaking into the house of a Ranjha family with support from local policemen and beating their women.

Dozens of Ranjha family men and women then staged a demonstration and blocked the National Highway on Sunday to protest the incident.  The protestors dispersed after the Taranda Muhammad Panha SHO Hayat Shah Jahan Khattak arrived at the scene and assured them of action against the accused.

Muhammad Aslam Javed, Muhammad Ajmal, Ghulam Yasin, Fayyaz Ahmed were accused of dragging the women out in the street and beating them on Sunday. They had raided the house looking for Fauzia Bibi, a Maitla family woman, who had married Ghulam Yasin of Ranjha family without her elders’ consent some two months ago.  Five policemen including ASI Mushtaq of Taranda Muhammad Panah police station were allegedly accompanying the accused. The Ranjha family in a meeting with the SHO after the protest decided not to prosecute the policemen.

Earlier, Yasin and Fauzia told the media on Friday that they had married each other without any pressure from any side. Fauzia said that her family was threatening them and Yasin’s family.

They said they would not surrender to her family demand that he divorce her. The couple also met Rahim Yar Khan district police officer the same day.

Pappu Maitla, a relative of Fauzia, told The Express Tribune that they had filed a kidnapping case against Yasin with the Taranda Muhammad Panah police. He said they had to take the matter into their own hands after the police failed act on their complaint.

He said the Sunday incident could have been avoided had the Ranjhas honoured their agreement to pay Rs150,000 and marry a woman from their family to a Maitla man.

He said a jirga at former union council naib nazim Junaid Aslam’s house had settled the dispute between the two families on these terms.

However, Ghulam Abbas, Yasin’s first cousin, who said he had been present at the jirga denied that he or any other member of his family had agreed to the terms. “My cousin married their woman. Why should I be held accountable for that?,” he said.  He said the only way out was for Maitlas to withdraw their cases against him and Yasin. He said he would reciprocate by telling the police that they had settled the matter on our own and requesting that the four Maitla men in custody be released.

Abbas said the Maitlas had wrongfully implicated him in a robbery case at Uch Sharif police station. He alleged that some men from the Maitla family had kidnapped him and handed him into Uch Sharif police’s custody. The police, he said, was colluding with the Maitlas and nominated him in a robbery case.

The four accused were arrested under Sections 452, 354, 148 and 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2011.