Justice Muhammad Yawar issued the order in a petition filed by Shahid Abbas and his wife Allah Rakhi.
The petitioners alleged that Jhang police were harassing them since their marriage on May 8, 2010. They submitted that the police on October 4, 2010, registered a case against Abbas and his nine relatives for kidnapping Allah Rakhi, despite the fact that they were married.
The petitioners’ counsel, Advocate Pervaiz Aslam Chaudhry, told the court that Rakhi’s parents married her to Muhammad Riaz, a 50-year-old man, on September 11, 2008, in exchange for money. He said that the marriage was arranged against Rakhi’s will.
Advocate Chaudary said that during the 14 months Rakhi spent with Riaz, she was mistreated and beaten up. She fled from Riaz’s house on November 17, 2009.
She moved to a Darul Amaan as her parents had refused to take her back.
The counsel said that Rakhi filed a lawsuit for dissolution of her marriage with Riaz after moving to a relative’s house in Lahore. He said that the case was decided in her favour on February 1, 2010. After completing her iddat, she married Abbas.
Rakhi told the court that the Saddar police had been harassing them at the behest of her former husband. She said that the police raided their house a number of times, despite a restraining order from a sessions’ judge. She said that they filed a contempt of court petition against the police but it failed to stop them from bothering the couple.
The police, she said, asked them to pay Rs50,000 if they wanted to avoid being arrested. The couple and their family had to leave Jhang in order to avoid the police.
The petitioners’ counsel told the court that they filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court, which issued a directive forbidding the Saddar police from harassing the couple. He added that Umer Hayat, a sub inspector of Saddar police station, tore a copy of the LHC orders he was presented.
He requested the court to the direct the Saddar police to cancel the FIR against his clients.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 9th, 2010.
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