Actress Veena Malik has approached a family court in Karachi seeking directives for her former husband to return her dowry.
Veena, whose real name is Zahida Malik, through her lawyer filed a suit in a District South family court submitting that she and Asad Bashir had tied the knot in December 2014 and had two kids – Abram Khan and Amal Khan – from the marriage that was dissolved in January 2017.
She said she had filed an application in a Rawalpindi family court for the grant of guardianship of the children, which was allowed in October 2019.
The actress said Bashir had once taken the children to Dubai on the pretext of spending a day with them sans her consent, as well as that of the Rawalpindi court and them she had to travel to the United Arab Emirates to get the custody of the minors.
A Dubai court had also declared her the legal guardian of the children, she maintained.
The family court was informed that “at the time of marriage with the defendant, the parents, friends and family members of the plaintiff had given dowry articles valuing Rs20.3 million along with gifts, gold and diamond ornaments.”
Veena claimed that such articles were shifted from Rawalpindi to Bashir’s home in Kohat.
She said she was engaged in a long-drawn and expensive litigation pertaining to the custody of the children first in Rawalpindi and then in the UAE court, therefore, she could not concentrate on the return of the dowry. She said she and her family members time and again demanded that the defendant return the precious items. She said that initially, her former husband agreed to return the dowry but later on, started inventing excuses that they had been stolen from his ancestral place in Kohat.
The defendant as per the law of the land and even on moral and religious grounds was bound to return dowry, she contended.
The court would take up the matter for hearing on July 9 when the plaintiff is required to file an affidavit along with evidence to substantiate her claims.