KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Monday accepted the marriage of Dua Zehra, a teenage girl from Karachi, and declared Zaheer Ahmad, a young man from Punjab, as her husband.
Zehra appeared before the court to record her statement. She said she was not kidnapped rather she contracted marriage with Ahmad of her free will. She further claimed she was of legal age, 18.
After hearing her statement, the court accepted her union with Ahmad and pronounced that the kidnapping case had been disposed of.
Zehra requested the court that she wanted to go with her husband Ahmad and refused to meet her parents.
But Zehra’s mother pleaded that she wanted to meet her daughter. On this, the judge said what could he do when the girl herself does not want to meet her mother. However, later he said that if the parents wanted to meet Zehra, they could.
Emotional scenes were witnessed in the court when Zehra’s mother kept on calling her daughter’s name but she ignored her.
The petitioner’s lawyer pleaded with the court that Zehra’s medical examination should be conducted to ascertain her real age.
However, the Sindh advocate general disagreed saying nothing of this sort was mentioned in the law.
But the judge ordered a medical examination of the young woman to ascertain her age.
The advocate general contended it was not his province case, rather it was a case of Punjab. He said the girl herself confessed that she left her house with her own free will.
The court wondered how the police wrote her age as 10-year-old.
The judge asked the authorities to shift Zehra to the shelter room. He also stopped police from arresting Ahmad.
