Woman loses eye in acid attack by family

LHC orders police to recover the son, husband of the petitioner

LAHORE:

A woman has approached the Lahore High Court (LHC) for the recovery of her minor son and husband from the custody of her family, accusing it of also leaving her blind in the left eye by throwing acid on her.

Justice Shehram Sarwar of the LHC directed the SHOs of Ahmed Pur Sial and Shorkot police stations in Jhang district to produce the petitioner’s two-year-old son Farman Haider and husband Mazhar Abbas before the court after recovering them from the custody of her father Khan Muhammad, brothers Munir Ahmed and Ansar Ali and Ashraf, an uncle of her husband.

Petitioner Shahnaz Mai filed the habeas corpus petition through Advocate Shafique Baloch, stating that she had lost her eye and the respondents were keeping her son and husband in illegal custody because she had married Mazhar of her own will after the death of her first husband.

She implored the court that 10 days back her family members took them hostage and threw acid on her left eye to punish her for the marriage.

They tied her and her husband with chains, and tortured and threatened to kill them, she said.

The petitioner said she had managed to escape and reached the LHC to get justice.

Talking to The Express Tribune, Shahnaz said her family wanted to teach her a lesson because of her marriage. She said that after the death of her first husband, her family did not care of her and her four children.

Finding it difficult to survive, she married Mazhar to secure the future of her children, she said. But her family did not agree over the marriage.

Neither were they fulfilling her and her children’s basic needs nor making efforts for her marriage, she said.

She said that when she married Mazhar, her relatives got annoyed, while the family of her late husband started demanding custody of her four children from him. They also developed a grudge against her because she was not ready to leave her children, she said.

The woman said her second husband’s family was also opposing the marriage because she already the mother of four children.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, September 10^th, 2020.