A distraught father : Man asks court to help find his teenage daughter

Sara was allegedly abducted and forced into a second nikkah.

ABBOTABAD: The father of 17-year-old Sara* has asked the Peshawar High Court to help find his missing daughter.

Syed Qadir Shah, a daily wage earner from Datta Mansehra village, says his daughter was kidnapped by a health official and forced into a nikkah.

Shah and his family moved to the village in 2005 after the earthquake hit Jabbar Devli. He lost four daughters and two sons in the natural disaster and decided to move to Datta with his son, Sara and wife.

Last year on September 9, Shah took his wife to Ayub Medical Complex in Abbottabad for a check-up, their daughter was also there with them. “I had stepped out of the hospital to buy medicines from the pharmacy when I heard my daughter screaming,” Shah said, adding he rushed back inside and saw his wife crying and shouting that their daughter had been kidnapped.

According to Shah, he kept searching for her and calling on her cell phone but the phone was switched off. “I never thought after burying six of my children, there was something even worse in store for me,” said the distressed father.

An FIR was lodged against Muhammad Zaib on September 19, 2013 but the accused has still not been arrested. Shah said that before Sara was abducted, her nikkah was solemnised with her cousin Salahuddin Shah in March 2013 and her wedding was due to take place in December the same year.

He said a few months after she was abducted, Sara managed to get in touch and told him that Zaib, who was related to a police official, had kidnapped her and taken her to a village in Mingora, Swat. She told her father that Zaib had forced her into a marriage and that she was currently living in Kohistan.

Two months ago, a jirga was held in Sazain Kot village to sort the issue out. The jirga decided the family of the accused would produce the girl and if she confirmed that she was taken against her will, she would be returned to her parents. As a penalty, the accused would also have to pay a fine of Rs3 million to the family.

The jirga also said that if the girl says she went with Zaib on her own, her father will have to pay the same amount as fine to Zaib’s family. The boy’s family, however, failed to produce the girl in front of the jirga.

Shah said that he refused to accept his daughter, who was betrothed to her cousin, would elope with another man. He added that he would abandon the search if she told him in front of the jirga that she wanted to be with Zaib.

When contacted, Abbottabad Police Investigation Branch DSP Shah Nazar Khan said the girl had eloped with Zaib and had recorded a statement confirming this in the court of the Kohistan judicial magistrate last year.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8^th, 2014.