Court orders formation of medical board to ascertain Dua Zehra's age

A judicial magistrate in Karachi ordered the formation of a medical board on Saturday to ascertain the age of Dua Zehra – a resident of Karachi who had gone missing from the city some months ago and later found to have got married.

During the hearing of the case, the petitioner’s lawyer said that as per her husband, Zaheer, she had been in contact with him for the past three years and gone to him herself.

The court said that the health secretary should be written a letter seeking the formation of a medical board to determine her age. “Bring the girl here [to Karachi] or have her medical conducted there [Lahore]; that is the prosecution's concern,” the judge added.

The investigation officer apprised the bench that the police conducted its investigation as per the law. The judge told them to investigate further, adding that the court only wanted to determine the age of the girl and that it was not a “C-class” case.

IO Shaukat Shahani said the police cannot book Zaheer for kidnapping after the statement made by Dua. “We investigated the case from all angles and the girl married him out of her free will,” DSP Shahani said. The police will further proceed after going through the copy of the Supreme Court’s order, he added.

Read Students mobilise communities about underage marriage, pregnancy

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had disposed of a petition of Dua's father, challenging the ruling of the Sindh High Court (SHC) which said that Dua was free to decide who she wanted to live with.

A two-member bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Junaid Ghaffar, in its written order, had said that the girl stated that she was 17 to 18 years old and had married out of her free will. The bench had observed that Dua claims that her father had filed a false case of kidnapping, inspite of his knowledge of her having left home out of her own free will. “No evidence was found of the girl's abduction,” the court had remarked.

This SHC decision was challenged in the SC by Dua’s father. However, the apex court returned the petition and said that the case did not fall in the purview of their jurisdiction. It had asked the petition to approach the relevant forum.

In April this year, Dua’s parents filed a case that their daughter had been kidnapped. Subsequently, police swung into action and with the help of Punjab police, the Karachi teenager was recovered in Okara. At the time, Dua issued a statement that she had married out of her accord and Zaheer was her husband.