Loverbirds in hiding: Matric student weds his tutor on the run

BAHALWALPUR: A matric student who allegedly ran away with his school teacher was recovered by police officials on Sunday. Police officials said that the boy’s parents had filed a kidnapping case against a taxi driver for having taken their son.

According to Kotwali Station House Officer (SHO) Malik Rasheed, a police team investigated the case and discovered, said to be 14-year-old, student Ali Raza was taking tuition at a private centre and at the home of 27-year-old Nadia Hussain. According to police officials, private schoolteacher and Bahawalpur Islamia University (BIU) student Nadia Hussain had developed relations with Raza and the pair had intended to elope.

Police officials said that Raza’s family filed a kidnapping case with the Bahawalpur police on Friday. “The family questioned Raza’s friend Rizwan who had helped Raza and Nadia escape,” Rasheed said. ”Rizwan told us that he had gotten a taxi driver Rana Nadeem to take the couple to Lahore to get married,” he said. The SHO said that the couple tried to get married in Lahore but were unable to do so because Raza did not have a CNIC card. “Nadeem brought them back to Bahawalpur and they apparently got married in a local moque. We managed to track their location through Nadeem’s cell phone,” the SHO said, adding that the couple had been staying with Nadeem in his house for over two weeks.

A police team apprehended the couple and the taxi driver from Fauji Basti on Sunday. Police officials said that Hussain had stolen her parent’s jewellery and money as well but her parents had refused to press any charges in the case.

“We began digging into the matter and found out that the pair had been planning the elopement for a while,” the SHO said. He said that the police had spoken to one of Hussain’s colleagues at the private school where she was teaching and also one of her class fellows at the university. “They both confirmed our suspicions and told us that she had been planning to run away with Raza and that they knew some people who would help them,” he said.

“She told me a few weeks ago that she was thinking about running away with him and when I was shocked she pretended she was joking,” said Hussain’s class fellow at BIU, Shireen. “I tried to talk her out of the relationship but she said they were in love and were determined to get married,” she said.

Raza’s parents came to the Kotwali police station on Monday and reconciled with their son. “We are taking our son and his wife home,” Raza’s father Shakeel said. Shakeel said that the age difference or the legal question of the marriage did not matter to him. “These are not real issues. He has performed a nikah in a mosque and they are married,” he said.

Police officials have still not released the taxi driver, Nadeem, from custody but they let the couple go with their parents. When asked why the police had let Raza go after he was underage and had contracted a marriage with a 27-year-old master’s student, SHO Rasheed said “That doesn’t matter, he has a moustache and cannot be that young.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2011.