Freewill: Love-marriage-couple say police harassing them

Call kidnapping case registered against the man ‘baseless’.

FAISALABAD:

A man and his wife have accused Samanabad police of harassing them in a kidnapping case registered by the woman’s father at a Lahore police station.

Speaking at a press conference, Mohsin Shehzad termed the kidnapping case ‘baseless’ and said that his father-in-law was opposed to his marriage with Zainab Zulfiqar. “He registered the case on learning about our marriage last month,” he said.

Shehzad said the couple had been on the run since policemen from Samanabad station in Faisalabad and Rang Mehal in Lahore, where the kidnapping case was registered by his father-in-law, had recently raided his home.

“My brother was taken to the police station for questioning where he was beaten up by the police. They held him at the police station overnight,” he said.

Zulfiqar was also present at the press conference.

She said she had recently testified before a district and sessions judge in Faisalabad that she had married Shehzad of her freewill.

“The police are still harassing us,” she said, “My parents wanted to arrange my marriage to a man in the extended family,” she said. She said the man had apparently offered a hefty amount in return for his marriage with her. She said her father was threatening to kill the couple if she did not end her marriage with Shehzad and return to her parents’ home in Lahore.

“He is  using his connections in Lahore to pressure Samanabad police into harassing Shehzad’s family,” she said.

“We have left his home and are constantly on the run now,” she added.

The couple said they had married at a court on June 28, six days after they returned to Pakistan. Shehzad said he had been working at a cold storage facility in Dubai and Zulfiqar was employed at an airlines in Kuwait.

They said they had met through Facebook nine months ago.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 23^rd, 2012.