Muhammad Fareed, along with other fishermen, had been sailing a small boat far away from the seashore so he could feed his 11-member family living in Karachi’s Machhar Colony. On their way back, when they reached near the coastal area of Mubarak Village, Fareed’s wife met him to break the news.
Three masked men had plundered their house that night (July 5). They had held the entire family hostage at gunpoint and taken away the couple’s 14-year-old daughter. Fareed dropped everything and ran home immediately. After he discussed the incident with his family, he found out that the masked men were residents of the same neighbourhood.
The next day the couple went to the house of each of the men to ask what they had done with their daughter. “I begged them to return my daughter,” said Fareed, “but they threatened us instead, saying we shouldn’t visit them again if we want to keep our family safe.”
The men were not willing to say anything about their daughter, so Fareed requested the Docks police station officials to register his complaint against the three men, fearing they could sell his daughter, but the police refused.
The father ran from pillar to post and arranged Rs20,000 to hire a lawyer just to get an FIR registered. After the court’s orders, the police complaint was finally lodged. But 10 days had already been wasted.
Fareed was shocked when the police showed him the Nikahnama (marriage certificate) of his daughter, who was supposedly married to 23-year-old Saeed Hussain. The Nikahnama had been sent to the police by Hussain’s relatives.
The available record, however, shows the girl to be a student of sixth grade. She had passed the fifth grade this year from the school being run by The Citizens Foundation in Machhar Colony. The school leaving certificate shows that she was born in 2007.
Moreover, the Nikahnama had not been signed by any witnesses, and it also claimed that the girl was born in 2002. Fareed said the perpetrators had tried to show that she was an adult at the time of the Nikah (marriage). “But she is 14 years old.”
Some three days after the registration of the FIR, the police recovered the girl and arrested Hussain. The magistrate, however, remanded Hussain in judicial custody and sent the girl with her in-laws.
“I have no words to express my feelings at that time,” said Fareed. “I had no money to fight a legal battle against those abductors, so I silently returned home.” The lawyer who had assisted him in lodging his police complaint also refused to present his case in court. But someone told the father to get in touch with Advocate Rana Asif Habib, who works for children’s rights.
“Before recording the girl’s statement,” said Habib, “the police should have sent her to a shelter home or a child protection unit so that she could record her statement without any influence of her in-laws. But unfortunately, she was sent with her in-laws.”
He pointed out that the provincial government has already criminalised child marriages under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013, so he will recover the girl from her in-laws. “While registering the FIR, the police should have considered the child marriage law, but they didn’t do so.”
Fareed only wants his daughter to return home. But it seems impossible, opined Habib, until the father succeeds in registering another case under the child marriage restraint act.
Back in 2012, Fareed’s 10-year-old son had also gone missing. The parents are still looking for the boy. And now they are worried about their daughter, whose fate will be decided in court after another case is registered.
