Dua Zahra — who had mysteriously gone missing from Karachi in April but later declared that she had run away from her home to marry 21-year-old Zaheer Ahmed — appeared on camera with her husband for the first time in an official interview with media.

The interview is doing the rounds on the internet since it surfaced on Monday. In it, Zahra and Zaheer reveal the “actual matter” in conversation with the interviewer.

In her message for her parents, Zahra said that she has married according to Islamic laws but she is sorry if her parents still think she has made a mistake.

“I would like to request them [parents] to accept me and Zaheer with a big heart. I know they have gone through sorrow and even I have but I ask them to accept us,” Zahra, who says she is 17 years old, said.

Zahra said that she travelled all the way to Lahore from Karachi alone.

“I took a rickshaw from my house to the taxi stand and travelled to Lahore by taxi.”

When asked about the general concern of how a teenage girl could travel all alone safely, Zahra said she intended to marry and, therefore, Allah helped and protected her.

She also claimed that her father, Mehdi Kazmi, wanted to marry her off to her nephew (his brother’s son) Zainul Abideen in order to get the “a plot” he had a dispute over with his brother.

At the start of the interview, Zaheer said he is not a “gardener” and he deals with the sale and purchase and repair of mobile phones.

“I have recently done my FSC from pre-medical and earn up to Rs60,000 to Rs80,000 per month through mobile phone dealing,” he added.