Police submit challan in Dua Zehra case

KARACHI: Police on Thursday submitted the challan in Dua Zehra case to the court of Judicial Magistrate (East), ARY News reported.

According to details, the investigating officer (IO), in Dua Zehra’s case, filed a challan before the judicial magistrate, urging the court to quash the FIR in Zehra case after categorising the case as “C class”.

In the charge-sheet, the IO maintained that Dua Zehra, the teenage girl, travelled from Karachi to Punjab and tied the knot with Zaheer Ahmed of her own free will. He said that no evidence was found that the girl had been abducted as the medical report confirmed Dua Zehra’s age of between 16 to 17.

In challan, the IO removed Section-216 and Child Marriage Act against suspects in teenage girl abduction case. The challan also declared suspects, Asghar and Ghulam Mustafa, arrested in Zehra case as innocent.

SHC verdict

The Sindh High Court (SHC) in its verdict, announced on June 8, allowed the Karachi teenage girl to decide whether she wants to live with her parents or go with husband.

A two-member bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Junaid Ghaffar, issued written order in Dua Zehra case, the Karachi teenager girl who had gone missing from her hometown Karachi and later surfaced in Punjab.

The SHC, in its written verdict, observed that no evidence was found that the girl had been abducted and stopped authorities concerned from registering abduction cases. “No evidence was found of the girl’s abduction,” the court ruled.

The case

It is pertinent to mention here that Dua Zehra’s family had approached police, hours after she went missing from near her house in Alfalah Town in Karachi on April 16, and had appealed through a number of channels for help in finding their daughter.

Days after her disappearance, police found out that Dua Zehra had married a boy named Zaheer in Lahore. She was then produced before SHC where the court ordered a medical examination of the girl. The medical examination stated that she is aged between 16 to 17-year-old.