Wedding or abduction? Man booked for ‘kidnapping’ woman

Police say the couple eloped married woman goes missing in unrelated case.

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Police have booked a Christian man for allegedly kidnapping an 18-year-old Muslim woman.

Although the Industrial Area police registered a kidnapping case against Aamir Masih on the complaint of the woman’s mother, an investigation officer suggested that the woman had eloped with the man of her own free will. The officer, who requested anonymity, said that the boy had “converted to Islam and married the girl”.

He added that the facts would be clear once the investigation was complete.

The police official said that both the boy and the girl were neighbours in Sector H-8. “Its love,” he said, while quoting a person who had told the police that the suspect could provide a marriage certificate as proof within a day. He said the boy was a government sanitary worker, but the police had been unable to locate him.

Meanwhile, the police registered a separate kidnapping case after a married woman went missing from her home in the Golra area. The Golra police registered a case on the complaint of the woman’s husband*.

Sub-inspector Muhammad Zameer, who is the investigation officer of the case, said that the complainant initially said that his wife had gone missing, and later claimed that a man named Jalal Khan had kidnapped her and taken her to Layyah district in southern Punjab. The incident was reported to the police on May 30 but the police did not register an FIR till June 9.

Kidnappings of women are on the rise in the capital. The capital police registered at least five such cases in the month of May. Police officials say that in most of the cases, the women had eloped or run off with men of their own free will.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 11^th, 2016.