Pakistan

Dua Zehra is free to go wherever she wants, Lahore court rules

Published

2 years ago

Farwa

Dua says she wasn’t kidnapped, left of her own free will to marry.
Lahore court rejects police’s appeal to shift girl to Darul Aman.
Dua has filed a case against her father and cousin.

LAHORE: A court in Punjab’s capital Tuesday ruled that Dua Zehra — the girl who mysteriously went missing from Karachi around 10 days back and was found today — was free to go wherever she wants.

Lahore Model Town Court’s Judicial Magistrate Tasawar Iqbal rejected the police request to shift the girl to Darul Aman after she was presented before the court hours after her video statement came to light.

Before announcing the verdict, the judge sent her husband, Zaheer, outside the courtroom to record her statement.

Dua told the judge that she was 18 years of age, came from Karachi to Lahore willingly, no one had kidnapped her, and she did not want to go to Darul Aman.

“I am safe, my life is not in danger,” Dua told the judge. Following this, the judge ordered that she be allowed to go “wherever she wants”, and the police let the couple go free.

Dua files kidnapping case against father

Dua had earlier filed a case against her father Mehdi Ali Kazmi and a cousin, Zainul Abideen, in a Lahore court. Despite the case being filed in Lahore, the police have claimed they found the couple from Pakpattan.

The Punjab police spokesperson had also said that the Karachi police were informed of every development in the case, and all possible coordination was being made.

Meanwhile, in her case, Dua had accused Kazmi of barging into her house in Lahore and trying to kidnap her with the help of her cousin.

“My father wanted to force me to marry my cousin Zainul Abideen. My father and Abideen storm into my house and verbally abused and threatened me and my husband,” Dua said in her complaint.

She said that her neighbours foiled the kidnapping bid.

Dua also said that she has married of her own free will, and she is “living a happy life with my husband”.

Maintaining that she wants to stay with her husband, Dua demanded action against Kazmi and Abideen under the code of criminal procedure.

The magistrate’s court took up Dua’s case and summoned her with evidence against her father on May 18.

Moreover, Dua also filed a separate petition against harassment at a district and sessions court.

The video message

Meanwhile, a video message of Dua has also surfaced in which she says she was not kidnapped and left home herself and married Zaheer Ahmed. She said her family was forcing her to marry someone else.

The couple were reportedly staying at Zaheer’s uncle’s home.

A day earlier, Karachi police said that Dua tied the knot with a resident of Lahore. The marriage certificate of the couple has been obtained by the police and is being verified.

It is being reported that the couple have filed a harassment petition at a sessions court, where Dua also recorded her statement on April 19.

As per the sources, Dua and her husband are expected to record their statements with the police.

Dua Zehra has submitted an affidavit in favour of her husband, in which she has confirmed her marriage with Zaheer Ahmed on April 17.

“I didn’t take anything along with me while leaving home,” Dua said in the video statement.

She also denied being 14 years old and said her family had given the police the wrong information.

“I am an adult and my correct age is 18 years,” she said adding that she is living a happy life with her husband and asked not to be bothered.

Parents deny Dua’s claims

Soon after the video message surfaced, Dua’s father, in a press conference, denied her claims questioning how his daughter could be 18 years old when he had not even been married for 18 years.

Mehdi Ali Kazmi said he was married on May 7, 2005, and he has Dua’s birth certificate with April 27, 2008, as her date of birth.

He demanded the authorities bring Dua back to them or shift her to a child protection centre. He also demanded a thorough investigation of what actually was the matter in this case.

“I request Sindh inspector general, and Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah to bring my daughter back. I fully trust the child protection bureau […] hand the girl over to them.

“My daughter is saying what she is told to say. […] The boy trapped my daughter through the in-game messaging system,” Kazmi said.

Moreover, Dua’s mother said that as a lawyer’s daughter she has aware enough to know that the marriage certificate is not legal.

“The nikah nama does not have the seal of the person who solemnised the marriage,” she said.

The person whose name is written on the marriage certificate has also refuted reports of solemnising the marriage, she added.

Dua’s mother expressed concern that her daughter might have been blackmailed through a video.

Another video message of Dua with Zaheer later came to the fore, where she repeated that she willingly came with the man and married him in court.

Meanwhile, Zaheer said he is a resident of Lahore and claimed he knew Dua for three years.

He said that they came into contact through an online video game, PUBG.

Zaheer also claimed that Dua has come from Karachi of her own will.

A day earlier, commenting on the reports of her recovery, Deputy Inspector-General (DIG) Operations Dr Abid Khan had said the Lahore police have shared the Dua’s nikkah nama with their Karachi counterpart and are using the document to trace her.

“There is no truth to the reports of Dua’s recovery […] the real facts behind this matter can only be verified once the girl is in our custody,” the police officer had told journalists.

The case

The case of the mysterious disappearance of the teenage girl from Karachi’s Al-Falah shook everyone. She went missing from the Golden Town area 10 days ago, triggering a sense of fear among the masses.

Police conducted multiple raids but failed to find the girl. The police had claimed that she might have left the house of her own choice but the family had rejected it.

Latest News

Nawaz Sharif departs for a five-day personal visit to China.

Published

16 hours ago

Farwa

Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and a former prime minister, departed for China on Monday night for a five-day private visit.

Nawaz Sharif is visiting China, escorted by Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.

Nawaz Sharif reportedly planned to see Chinese company owners as well as discuss the Punjab province’s development projects. During his visit in China, he will also have a medical examination.

In addition, the fact that Nawaz and his party chose China for his first overseas trip after he returned to Pakistan in October of last year shows how much weight the Asian superpower holds.

Eight other Chinese companies were reportedly prepared to start working right away, while 16 Chinese companies had expressed interest in the Nawaz Sharif IT City, which is the brainchild of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, who has plans for similar projects in all of the province’s major cities.

Remarkably, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s scheduled visit to China ahead of his anticipated talks with Chinese authorities next month coincides with the elder Sharif’s visit.

Dar’s presence alongside Nawaz simultaneously underscores the party leadership’s confidence in him and serves as a reminder of why he was chosen to be foreign minister.

The fact that this visit was organized in the wake of the recent terror assault in Shangla on Chinese engineers involved in the Dasu hydroelectric Project, however, may provide some insight into the significance of this visit.

That was followed by Pakistan’s resolute pledge to deal harshly with those groups that have been attacking Chinese citizens in an effort to undermine the cordial relations between the two countries.

Education

The president of Iran’s wife, Dr. Jamileh, claims that knowledge without ethics is worthless.

Published

16 hours ago

Farwa

The Iranian President’s wife, Dr. Jamileh-Sadat Alamolhoda, claimed on Monday that Islam had illuminated the globe 1400 years ago by emphasizing the value of knowledge.

She said, “Knowledge without ethics has no value,” during her speech at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML).

Dr. Jamileh earlier today opened the university’s cultural festival. She visited a number of foreign and national booths exhibiting distinct cultures and customs.

Attendees included academic members, a sizable student body, Director General Brig Shahzad Munir, Rector NUML Major General (retd) Shahid Mahmood Kayani, and many others.

Speaking to the pupils, Dr. Jamileh added that religious leaders in Iran and this area were crucial in keeping the nations unified during the colonial era.

She was impressed by Muhammad Iqbal, the Poet of the East, for his contribution to the dissemination of Islamic norms and knowledge via his poetry.

She also gave a speech at the launch of her own book, “The Art of Living Femininely,” adding that it was also being translated into Urdu.

She expressed gratitude for NUML’s contribution to the creation and sharing of knowledge and expressed a willingness to investigate the potential for reciprocal scholarly cooperation in the fields of languages and science and technology.

Thanking the NUML administration for welcoming her and giving her a chance to engage with the teachers and students, Dr. Jamileh expressed her gratitude.

In his remarks at the event, the Rector NUML stated that profound people-to-people links as well as bilateral relations between Pakistan and Iran are historical, fraternal, and mutually trustworthy.

The honorable guest accepted an honorary doctorate in educational sciences from the NUML Rector.

Latest News

To discuss the judges’ letter, the IHC CJ calls for a full court meeting.

Published

17 hours ago

Farwa

A full court conference has been called by the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court for this Tuesday in order to consider the matter of the letter of six IHC judges.

The full court session is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. All judges, including district and session court judges, have been asked for comments by the chief justice’s office of the Islamabad High Court.

The development follows accusations made by six judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against the nation’s intelligence services for meddling in judicial matters.

Judges Babar Sattar, Sardar Ejaz Ishaq Khan, Arbab Muhammad Tahir, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kiyani, Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri, and Justice Rafat Imtiaz are the six judges.

In response to the letter, Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa had intimated on March 27 that the Supreme Court would convene as a full court.

The Supreme Court’s Justice Yahya Afridi has withdrawn from the suo moto case involving the letter authored by six judges of the Islamabad High Court (IHC).

Prior to this, the Islamabad High Court Bar Association petitioned the Supreme Court under the Constitution, asking for an open and impartial inquiry into the six judges’ letter that purportedly involved meddling in judicial matters.

The petitioner begged the supreme court to prosecute individuals who were found to have influenced the legal system.

The petition claimed that the judges had brought up a serious matter. “If the apex court deems it necessary, it should refer the matter to the Supreme Judicial Council for review,” it requested.

The petitioner argued that the only source of justice and defender of the Constitution was an independent judiciary. Under no circumstances can the judiciary’s independence be compromised.

How it started

A letter against the “interference of intelligence agencies in judicial matters” was sent to the Supreme Judicial Council on March 25 by six justices of the Islamabad High Court.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court took suo moto notice and made hints about forming a full court to consider the case. Prior to that, the federal government established a one-man inquiry commission, but Tassaduq Hussain Jillani, the former chief justice, refused to allow the body to begin any proceedings.