The Sindh High Court has accepted the marriage of Dua Zehra and declared Zaheer Ahmad as her husband.Dua Zehra on Monday appeared before the Sindh High Court and recorded her statement under oath saying that she was not kidnapped. Rather she contracted Nikah with Zaheer Ahmad with her free will. She said she was an adult, 18-year-old and had attained the legal age to contract marriage.
After hearing Dua’s statement, Justice Junaid Ghaffar accepted her union with Zaheer and pronounced that Dua Zehra’s kidnapping case had been disposed of. Dua Zehra requested the court that she wanted to go with her husband Zaheer. She refused to meet her parents.
But Dua’s mother pleaded that she wanted to meet her daughter. On this, the judge said what he could do when the girl did not want to meet her mother. However, later he said that if parents wanted to meet Dua, they could meet her. Emotional scenes were witnessed in the court when Dua’s mother kept on calling the name of her daughter but Dua ignored her.
Petitioner’s lawyer Altaf Khoso pleaded with the court that Dua’s medical examination should be conducted to ascertain her real age as the girl was underage. However, the Sindh advocate general disagreed saying nothing of this sort was written in law. But the court ordered medical examination of Dua to ascertain her age within two days.
The Sindh AG contended that it was not his province’s 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 Dua’s age as 10-year-old.
The judge asked the authorities to shift Dua Zehra to the shelter room. He also stopped police from arresting Zaheer.
After that the court adjourned the hearing till June 8.Dua Zehra went missing from Karachi. She fled to Punjab and contracted her Nikah with Zaheer Ahmad in April.
Karachi police on Sunday recovered Dua Zehra with the help of Punjab police in an action in Chishtian, Bahawalnagar and took the girl and her husband in their protective custody.
Dua’s father had registered a case of the kidnapping of his daughter and also filed a petition in the court requesting it to void the Nikah of his daughter conducted on April 17 as his daughter was a minor and she was even below the age of 14 at the time of her marriage.He pleaded that underage marriage was a crime under the Child Marriage Act, 2013.
