Six-month-old girl married off in Swara incident
By Shoukat Iqbal Khattak
Karachi: A “kidnapping” and subsequent love marriage with a girl by a married man has resulted in a Jirga ordering the marriage of his six-month-old daughter to the brother of the “kidnapped” girl.
According to sources, Alamzeb, “abducted” the daughter of his neighbour, Naseer, from the Reri Goth area in Karachi two months ago.
The sources said that Naseer’s daughter had actually eloped with Alamzeb as they loved each other, but the case was taken as a matter of honour by the family members of the eloped girl, who had started pressuring the family of the accused, inlcuding threats.
The sources said that Alamzeb, who has three children, hailed from the Hazara region, while the girl belonged to Charsadda in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The sources said that the wrangle between the two families led to holding of a Jirga comprising elders of the locality.
The Jirga, according to the sources, brokered a compromise between the two families and it was decided that the six-month-old daughter of Alamzeb should be married off to the brother of the girl, Haq Nawaz, 25, on the basis of Swara.
It is worth mentioning here that Swara is a child marriage custom in tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This custom is tied to blood feuds among different tribes and clans where the young girls are forcibly married to the members of different clans in order to resolve the feuds.
Source: The News
Date:5/31/2010
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