Marital issues: Women seek shelter in Darul Amman

Court send the women branded as karis by their husbands to Darul Aman.

SUKKUR: The Darul Aman received new lodgers this week after three women, who were fearing for their lives after their husbands branded them karis, escaped from their houses and came to the women police centre, Sukkur, to seek protection.

They were produced in front of first additional session judge Sukkur Anand Ram, who ordered them to be sent to the Darul Aman.

While talking to The Express Tribune, Shahida said that her marriage to Bashir Ahmed Waseer 15 years ago was based on watta satta, in which her husband’s sister had married her brother. The couple lived in Bharo Mohalla, New Pind. Shahida said that her brother had divorced his husband’s sister, after which her own in-laws started mistreating her. She said that her family had a hard time making ends meet as her husband worked as a security guard. “I tolerated their atrocities for three years, but could not do so anymore.”

Benazeer, meanwhile, was sold in marriage by his father to a 65-year-old man, Mohammad Murad Mirani, for Rs150,000. She was 12 years old at the time. She alleged that her husband would invite his friends over to their house in Kandhkot and then force her to pleasure them. Ironically enough, “[my husband] would beat me and call me a kari. [Meanwhile] my own family had disowned me.” She said that she fled from her house as soon as she had the opportunity.

For Irshad, the situation was not an entirely new one, as she had already lived in Darul Aman three years ago, after her husband of 14 years, Zahid Ali, suspected that she was having illicit relations with another man. However, at that time, her family had smoothened out her relations with her husband.

She returned home and started working as a maid, but then Ali started accusing her and her 12-year-old daughter Tanjeena of being karis. “I left my home along with Tanjeena and the youngest of my four daughters.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2012.