Court offers missing maid’s family protection

A court recently issued a verdict stating that the family of the missing housemaid were free to travel.

RAHIM YAR KHAN: The additional district and session’s judge recently issued a verdict stating that the sisters, brother and mother of missing 10-year-old housemaid Soha were free to travel at their will.

After hearing the court’s decision the girl’s family was in tears. Soha’s mother Mai Pathani told the court that the accused had threatened to kill her son if she pursued her daughter’s case. “We don’t know what they have done with our daughter and whether or not she is even alive. These are rich people they can pull many strings to keep us from pursuing justice,” she said. “We were forced to live in the landlady’s house and work for the same woman who abused my child,” she said. Despite a lawyer’s strike on July 23, the additional district and session judge Nazir Ahmed heard the case as soon as possible and pronounced his verdict given the gravity of the situation. Local police have been reluctant towards recovering Soha and arresting the accused involved. Soha’s family said their livestock and other belongings should be shifted from the house in supervision of the police because they did not want to go back to the landlord’s house.

“We fear for our lives and the police is not pursuing the case because they either know my daughter is dead or because they don’t want to go against Mr Siddique (landlord),” Soha’s mother said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2010.