Sukkur administration must announce that the jirga held on January 12 had no legal force.
LAHORE: This is apropos the report “Man tries to self-immolate after jirga tells him to wed underage daughters” (January 14). The plot of the story portrayed in the report is that a powerful jirga, which declared a villager karo, ordered him to pay a fine of Rs1.2 million and give his two underage daughters in marriage to the sons of the petitioner. Interestingly, the latter is a policeman and has the selfsame surname as of the president of the jirga. He was alleged to have had already murdered his two wives on the plea that they were kari with the accused.
It should be recalled here that the Sindh High Court Chief Justice Rehmat Hussain Jaffery passed a judgment on April 21, 2004 declaring the jirga system in Sindh as unlawful and illegal. This landmark judgment received universal commendation and applause. It is expedient that the government of Sindh should wake up and come to the help of the rural people to give them protection from the cruelty of the jirga system and that its executive machinery does not shrink from the responsibility of effective implementation of the high court decision.
In this particular case, the Sukkur administration must come into action and announce that the jirga held on January 12 had no legal force and any orders passed by it were null and void and also apprehend the people who participated in raiding the house of the accused and kidnapping his wife and elder daughter.
S Abrar Hussain
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2014.
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