Woman alleges son-in-law involved in trafficking. PHOTO: FILE
When an old woman comes to a newspaper office crying about exploitation by the police and lawyers, it does not always mean her story is true in its entirety, but if it involves allegations of trafficking women from the north, it merits an investigation.
Shamsul Duha, a mother of four, said her daughter Shahbakhta, a divorcee, was admitted at a seminary in Mardan, where she fell in love with Waseen, who used to visit her frequently at a boarding facility in one of the six seminaries located near Dwa Saray Chowk. When Duha and her husband Lajbar Ali learnt about the affair, they asked the seminary administration to stop the two from seeing each other.
“Waseem is involved in heinous crimes,” Duha said, accusing the latter of sweet-talking girls into eloping with him to sell them to ‘clients’ around the country. She was also carrying copies of an FIR she had registered with the police against the attempted kidnapping of her younger daughter, but she did not say who was behind it.
Shahbakhta ran away with Waseem after taking the haq mehr (dower) given by her former husband from her parents’ house in Jehangira in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, according to police sources in Islamabad, where the case took a new turn. Her parents had managed to extract some money from her former husband through the court to take care of her expenses.
“They took everything from us,” said Duha, seeming more concerned with the money than her daughter, with tears running down her cheeks.
The daughter and her husband, who had eloped to Karachi, returned to the federal capital, where the couple filed a case against Ali for fraud at the Secretariat Police Station for usurping a major chunk of Shahbakhta’s dower.
“The Secretariat SHO came to Jehagira along with a Pakhtun subordinate and asked my husband to give him Rs200,000 in return for scrapping the FIR filed against him. After his sixth visit, we decided to sell whatever we had and head somewhere far from the officer’s reach,” said Duha, while also claiming that no K-P police personnel were present during the raid.
The Secretariat police raided their house, collected money they had buried at home, and arrested Ali. Duha also accused then investigation officer (IO) Sarfaraz Ahmed of assaulting her and her three children, all minors, who were asleep at the time.
Ahmed, now deputed in the anti car-lifting cell, has a different story to tell. The former IO not only denies the accusations of asking for bribes, but also claims that her husband was arrested after the Supreme Court ordered that an FIR be registered against him for usurping the dower money that rightfully belonged to his daughter. “The family wanted to appropriate Rs3 million that was given to Shahbakhta by her former husband after the divorce,” he added.
When asked about Waseem, he said he had filed a complete charge sheet in court and that he could not comment further on the issue.
Ali’s bail has been rejected twice by the courts and the family is now planning to approach the Islamabad High Court. Sadly for the uneducated Duha, whose husband might be convicted in the case, visiting the courts and police stations has been a traumatic experience.
According to a source at the district court, her first lawyer took Rs10,000 from her before disappearing and her second lawyer does not bother to turn up at the hearings. But that is not all, he added. “Police officials and lawyers have allegedly told her that the ‘price of freedom’ for her husband would be her teenage daughter.”
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2013.
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