Pakistan Gender News Voice of Gender News From Pakistan
NAUSHAHRO FEROZE: A woman has made an appeal to the chief justice of Pakistan, speaker of National Assembly and other influential people to provide her protection from her husband and his relatives who, she alleged, were forcing her into prostitution.
Ms Razina, 35, told journalists on Sunday that her stepfather Mohammad Bux Ujjan, a revenue official, had given her in marriage to one Imam Bux alias Koro but after sometime learnt that Imam Bux and his relatives were not good people as he started compelling her to accompany strangers and beat her on refusal.
She said that after about two years of marriage, she got a chance to escape to her parents’ house in Moro and decided to file suit for dissolution of marriage.
Her husband and his relatives pressurised her stepfather to hand her back and threatened to deprive him of his job as revenue official. Later, they implicated him in a case and got him arrested, she said.
She said that they threatened to kill her mother, sister and stepfather if she refused to live with her husband and obey his orders. Under the circumstances, she felt herself compelled to resume living with her husband, she said.
Ms Razina said that her stepfather was released after she went back to her husband but it strained her relations with her parents to the extend that she could not go to their house when her younger sister, 14, died.
She said that her husband was again forcing her to accompany strangers and earning money. In the meantime, she gave birth to two sons and two daughters, she said.
About four months ago, her husband took her to Linepar area in Nawabshah and handed her over to professional prostitutes from whom he would collect money every week, she said.
She got a chance on Feb 14 to escape, left the prostitutes’ place, hired a car and went to her parent’s house in revenue colony, Naushahro Feroze.
Soon afterwards, her husband along with his relatives and companions reached there and threatened her stepfather of depriving him of job, killing her mother, stepfather and herself if she did not go with them but she and her family refused.
She expressed the fear that her husband and his relatives might kidnap her and demanded that police provide her and her parents protection.
Source: Dawn
Date:2/23/2009
