KARACHI: A Pakistani court on Monday ordered a medical test to determine the age of a young girl who disappeared in April from her home in Karachi in a case that has divided public opinion on whether the girl was kidnapped or if she ran away of her own choice and eloped.
The parents of Syeda Dua Zehra Kazmi filed a first information report (FIR) on April 16 alleging that their daughter had been kidnapped after she went to throw trash outside their home in the provincial capital of Sindh. The incident unleashed widespread outcry online and on media, prompting authorities to take notice and launch a search.
Kazmi's parents say she is underage but in a video statement released ten days after her disappearance, the girl said she was an adult and had not been kidnapped but had married a man, Zaheer Ahmed, of her “free will.” The legal age of marriage in Sindh is 18.
“The girl is standing in front of us and she says she has not been abducted,” Justice Junaid Ghaffar, head of a two-member bench at the Sindh High Court, that heard the case on Monday said, ordering an ossification test to determine Kazmi’s age based on her bone structure.
“She must be sent to a shelter home and a medical test shall be carried out to determine her age.”
The ruling came after Kazmi recorded a statement saying she wanted to be with her husband, not her parents.
Sindh Advocate General Salman Talibuddin shared basic information about the case at the outset of the proceeding.
“What we understand is that this young girl left our province [Sindh] on her own and it was in Punjab that she contracted the marriage,” he said. “This boy was in Punjab. She left on her own from Karachi. So, the question of kidnapping or abduction does not arise. And they contracted the marriage in Punjab so they committed no violation of the Sindh child restraint act," he said, referring to the Sindh Child Marriages RestraInt Act, 2013 which prohibits the marriage of a child under the age of eighteen and provides penalties for a male contracting party, the person who solemnizes the marriage as well as the parent or guardian concerned.
Altaf Ahmed Khoso, representing the Kazmi family, said it was a case of kidnapping since the girl was 13 years and eleven months old at the time of her disappearance, and her marriage was illegal.
Pakistan in 2017 outlawed child marriage and toughened penalties for those guilty of the crime in an effort to crack down on the practice which is estimated to affect one in five girls in the country.
The legislation passed by the National Assembly, or lower house of parliament, also banned forced marriage involving women from minority groups.
Under the law, offenders face a minimum of five years in prison and may serve up to 10 years. They also face a fine of up to 1 million rupees. Before the change in law, offenders faced a minimum of three years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rupees.
According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, around 21 percent of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18.
Local advocacy group, the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), estimates that almost 58 percent of girls are child brides in rural areas.