Extortion: ‘In-laws seeking money to return wife’

LAHORE: An additional district and sessions judge sought comments from the Misri Shah SHO on a petition seeking action against petitioner’s in-laws for allegedly demanding Rs500,000 to send his wife back to his house. Petitioner Tanveer Shehzada said that he and his wife had visited her family three days after their wedding. He said that his wife was carrying two jewellery sets and Rs20,000. However, when his mother-in-law saw the jewellery, she refused to allow her daughter to return to her husband’s house, Shehzada said. “She demanded that I give her Rs500,000 if I wanted my wife to return to me.” He said when he refused to give her the money, his mother-in-law told him to proceed with a divorce. Shehzada said that his mother-in-law had told him she was a widow. “But I found out that she had been married thrice.” Shehzada requested the court to direct the Misri Shah SHO to register an FIR against his wife’s family and to recover his wife.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2016.