Nimra Kazmi files for divorce a year after free-will marriage

A teenage girl who had gone missing from Karachi in April last year and was later found to have married a man in Punjab has filed for divorce in a Karachi family court, a year after their free-will marriage.

Nimra Kazmi had gone missing from her Saudabad home in April in 2022 and was traced to Dera Ghazi Khan where she claimed to have solemnised free-will marriage with Shahrukh Najeeb.

In her suit, the plaintiff stated that she had married Shahrukh out of her own free-will in Taunsa Sharif in the Dera Ghazi Khan district on April 18 against a dower amount or Haq Mehr of Rs5,000, which he had not paid yet.

Kazmi, who is seven months pregnant, said that soon after their marriage, her husband started taunting, abusing, and maltreating her and her parents.

“The defendant and his family are involved in immoral/anti- social activities and compelled her to develop illicit relations with strangers,” she alleged, adding that when her parents learned about this, they travelled to the defendant’s native town and brought her back to Karachi last month and she had since been residing with them.

The plaintiff said her husband neither gave her any affection or love nor fulfilled his legal and moral matrimonial obligation. She maintained that she had developed hatred and aversion towards the defendant due to his behaviour and was not willing to live with him.

Kazmi said she had made up her mind to end this “hateful union” with her husband even by way of khula and was ready to relinquish her dower amount. The court has been pleaded to dissolve the marriage.

In June last year, a District East judicial magistrate had set her at liberty to decide whom she wanted to live with after she in her statement under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code denied being kidnapped by anyone.