Dua Zahra urges parents to accept her, Zaheer with ‘big heart’

In her first interview with the media after being declared "free" by the court to make her own life decisions, 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 — urged her parents to accept her and her husband with a ‘big heart’.

In the interview, which has been making the rounds on social media, Zahra and Zaheer can be seen revealing the "actual matter" in conversation with the interviewer.

In her message to 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."

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 his nephew (his brother's son) Zainul Abideen in order to get "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.