Seeking protection from panchayats

Recently, a couple who married in court out of choice, in Rahim Yar Khan, has been on the run for their lives. The couple married without parental consent and soon thereafter, the woman’s father reported to the police that the husband had kidnapped his daughter. After a hearing in court with the couple and the woman’s father, the woman claimed that she had not been kidnapped or forced to marry. The couple is now seeking police protection after a panchayat declared the woman kari and ordered that the couple be killed for one million rupees as bounty. The culture of jirgas and panchayats across Pakistan has claimed the lives of too many young men and women, and the pressure is on the police now to get to the bottom of this case and protect the couple against all imminent harm if it is found that their lives are, indeed, in danger.

Another couple in a similar case, in Hafizabad, did not get a chance to seek police protection. Deceptively, the girl’s father called the couple over to reconcile matters. The innocent couple obliged and was soon met with fatal gunshots fired by the father. This ultimate Romeo and Juliet tragedy occurs far too often in both rural and urban areas of Pakistan. We implore the authorities in this case to deal severe punishment to the father, who so mercilessly took the lives of his own daughter and her husband.

Marriage by choice is a human right and one that parents, panchayats, jirgas or the state cannot override. The state and law-enforcement agencies must investigate the matter and come to the protection of hundreds of similar couples, who choose to exercise this right. No one should be given the freedom to override the law of the country and it is imperative that jirgas and panchayats, which attempt to take matters under their own control, are done away with. There is a crucial need for proper system of law to be put in place, covering both rural and urban areas of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 19^th, 2013.

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