Dua Zehra: Court allows Karachi girl to live with husband

LAHORE: A court in Lahore on Tuesday allowed Dua Zehra, a teenager who left Karachi to marry a boy in Punjab’s capital city, to live with her husband, ARY News reported.

The Model Town court, while issuing verdict on police’s plea to send the girl (14-year-old according to her father’s claim and 18-year-old as per her own) to Dar-ul-Aman, rejected the police’s request and allowed Dua Zehra to live with her husband Zaheer Ahmed.

She recorded her statement before Judicial Magistrate Tasawwur Iqbal in the absence of her husband who was sent out of the courtroom.

The girl repeated her earlier statement that she left her Karachi home and married Zaheer Ahmed on her own free will and wishes to live with him.

Dua Zehra’s missing complaint was registered by her father Ali Mehdi Kazmi on April 16 but police on April 25 found a nikah nama wherein she willfully accepted Zaheer Ahmed as her husband. She was soon recovered and recorded two video statements confirming that she left her Karachi home to marry Zaheer.

Dua Zehra also accused her father of torturing her and has petitioned a court to stop him from harassing her and her husband.

Her parents, on the other hand, demanded her custody or transfer to a Dar-ul-Aman under Child Protection Bureau, and claimed that they have evidence that she is a 14-year-old and cannot be legally married under Child Marriage Restraint Act.

‘No movement on the camera’

For 10 days, her father and mother had talked to a number of media channels and have revealed details about the mysterious disappearance which kept the whole nation on edge.

Her parents say she went out to throw away some trash bags at about 12:30 PM from her first-floor residence to a place in her alley but never returned.

“The place (where Dua Zehra went to place trash bags) is seconds away from my house and even some labourers were working there but they say they never saw her, a boy in neighbourhood claims he saw her returning towards her house but she never did,” her father Mehdi Ali Kazmi told a web channel.

The alley, where the family lives, is too narrow for anyone to even come up with a four-wheeler and Mehdi Ali had said he lives here for 16 years.