The girl earlier fled from her father after he allegedly tried to sell her as a bride for Rs70,000, and later from a house outside Lahore where she was kept hostage for several days.
On Tuesday, Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhary also directed the district police officer of Sheikhupura and the deputy superintendent of police of Muridke to protect Sadia and her mother Kausar, amid concerns that the girl would again be kidnapped.
The judge, hearing a petition from the Judicial Activism Panel, also told the police to arrest the kidnappers identified by the child and her mother.
Sadia ran away from her father Irshad’s house on July 19, a day before she was due to be married to an elderly man named Ijaz. She went to stay with her mother, who was separated from her father.
But Irshad told police his daughter had been abducted, and police searched relatives’ houses for the girl. Kausar then moved the courts, which ordered police to protect her and her daughter.
But on July 25, Sadia said, she was kidnapped from her mother’s house by Irshad, Maqsood Ahmed, Mahboob Ahmed, Iqbal Bibi, Iqra, Mah Jabeen and Noor Hussain.
She said they again tried to wed her to Ijaz, but fearing a police raid, moved her to a different location after one night. They shifted her to another location the next day, and then to another place three hours’ drive away two days after that.
Sadia said she escaped on August 5 with the help of a woman at the house where she was being kept hostage. The woman put her on a bus to Lahore, where she called her mother and then went to the police.
After recording her statement with Magistrate Yalmaz Ghani on August 5, Sadia was sent to stay at a women’s shelter as she feared being abducted again from her mother’s house. She told the court on Thursday she now wanted to live with her mother.
Narang Mandi police registered a kidnapping FIR naming the above mentioned accused under Section 365-B of the Pakistan Penal Code on July 29.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 11th, 2010.
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