Man booked for marrying step-daughter

Court orders arrest of nikah registrar, suspect and his mother

HARIPUR: Police were looking for a man who has allegedly married his step-daughter and run away with her. His other six accomplices, including the nikah registrar, have also gone into hiding.

A woman councillor of Pind Jamal Khan locality, Shah Bano, in an application filed to the local sessions judge said that she was a widow with two children and had married a man named Waris Ali.

However, Waris developed illicit relations with her daughter, Bano claimed in the plea, stating that one day he ran away with her daughter and contracted an illegal nikah.

The woman councillor stated before the court that the police were not registering the FIR owing to political influence of Waris in the area. The court issued orders to Sarai Salih Police Station to register an FIR of the complainant under Pakistan Penal Code Section 493A and Section 34 (common intention) against Waris, his mother and the nikah registrar along with three other people for abetment in an illegal marriage.



Section 493 reads: Cohabitation caused by a man deceitfully inducing a belief of lawful marriage. Every man who deceitfully causes any woman who is not lawfully married to him to believe that she is lawfully married to him and to cohabit with him in that belief, shall be punished with rigorous imprisonment for a term which may extend to 25 years and shall also be liable to fine.

The court observed that marriage was invalid with step-daughter, therefore there was no standing of the nikah and the young woman was cheated into fornication.

The counsel of the applicant, Advocate Sarfaraz Khan said that as per Islamic laws, even if a wife dies, a man cannot marry his step-daughter. Whereas in this case, Sarfaraz said, the woman was still in the wedlock of Waris and he played a farce with religion and law to marry his step-daughter.

The highly conservative people of the closely knit community of the suburban locality, Pind Jamal Shah, were in shock that how a man could fall so low.

The local Ulema have condemned this act and called for arresting not only the suspect but also the man who solemnised the nikah.

People say that police were not arresting Waris due to his political influence in the area. According to local residents, Waris was already married to two women and Bano was his third wife. Sources said that Waris has already hired lawyers to get his bail before arrest from the Peshawar High Court, Abbottabad bench.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2017.