Pindi sees steep rise in divorce cases

Nearly 6,000 fresh family suits filed in district courts in past 10 months

RAWALPINDI:

A total of 5,962 fresh cases of divorce, maintenance, child custody, and return of dowry were filed in the family courts of the Rawalpindi district in the last 10 months.

The courts granted 2,793 women the decrees of khula [divorce] on merit. The courts ordered 178 women to settle in their homes while 810 men were ordered to pay monthly expenses for their wives and children as well as return the dowry and the dower amount.

At present, a total of 7,500 family cases are pending in 30 family courts across the district. As many as 1,402 men also filed cases seeking orders for their wives to settle down in marriage who had left their homes due to misunderstandings and domestic disputes.

The steep rise of 17% in separation cases indicates that the marriage system in Pakistan is slowly breaking down. There has also been a record-breaking drop in inter-family marriages.

One of the major reasons for increased divorce cases is that many young women elope away with people they barely know through social media and marry them in the name of love.

Since the use of social media is very common in every other household and is easily accessible to all in both homes and educational institutions, it is destroying the traditional marriage system of the country.

Another reason for the sharp rise in divorce cases is ill-matched marriages where parents forcefully marry their daughters off to less educated and unemployed men who later on find it difficult to continue the relationship.

In an occurrence, a suspected bandit who pretended to be a police officer married a young female doctor who worked at a local government hospital. A dispute took place when the fake identity of the bandit was exposed which led to the eventual separation of the couple.

The lady doctor obtained a divorce from the family court on the grounds of khula after the truth about her husband’s role as a bogus police officer was revealed, and a fraud case was filed.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2022.