Freewill marriage: Couple seeks high court’s protection

Couple files petition seeking protection against police harassment.

KARACHI:

An attack by target killers couldn’t prevent an engaged couple from getting married and now they have headed to court to protect their union from another obstacle: unwilling parents.

Recently, a couple - R*, and her husband, Z* - filed a petition in the court, seeking protection against the police’s harassment. Both are residents of Baghdadi in Lyari Town. She told the court that her father had voluntarily gotten her engaged to Z some months ago and they were to get married soon. “Before the nikah, Z was attacked by target killers,” she recalled.

The man was taken to one of the city’s major private health facilities. “The doctors amputated one of his legs. That’s why my father broke off the engagement,” she added.

But the couple wasn’t ready to call it quits. On May 24, R fled from her parents’ home. The next day, she submitted an affidavit of freewill before a Justice of Peace and later got married in the court.

The couple’s lawyer said that the woman’s parents then registered a false abduction case, nominating the groom and his relatives. “The woman is 18 years old and has solemnised the marriage of her own choice. But the couple is still being harassed by the police,” claimed the lawyer. He asked the court to direct the police to stop harassing the couple.

Judge Irfan Saadat Khan issued notices to the provincial home secretary, advocate general, SHOs of the Baghdadi as well as Docks police stations and the woman’s father to respond to the allegations by the next hearing.

*Names changed to protect identities

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2013.