Case sought against father for forced marriage

Woman says she was being forced to marry an old, illiterate and jobless drug addict.

LAHORE:

An additional district and sessions judge on Tuesday sought comments from the Shahdara SHO by November 22 in a petition seeking the registration of a case against the petitioner’s father and other relatives for trying to force her to marry a man more than twice her age.

Petitioner Uzma Bibi, 21, said her father Din Muhammad and some relatives were forcing her to marry Riaz Ahmed, 49. She said she wanted to marry Muhammad Azhar instead.

When she told her parents that she wanted to marry Azhar, she said, they threatened her with dire consequences.

Uzma Bibi said that her father detained her in a room for a week and let her out only after she agreed to marry Ahmed. She said that she left home and went to her uncle Muhammad Majid’s house.

Uzma Bibi said that when her mother opposed her marriage to Ahmed, her father thrashed her.

She said that Ahmed was one of her father’s friends. Both were drug addicts, she said, and Ahmed was uneducated and jobless.

She said she had visited the Shahdara police station but the SHO did not register a case. She asked the court to direct the SHO to register a case against her father and relatives who were forcing her to marry an older man and threatening and detaining her.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2013.