Underage marriage case: Court bars publishing girl’s name and pictures

A court on Tuesday barred the media from disclosing the name, picture, or any other particulars of a 15-year-old who went missing from Karachi in April and was later traced in Punjab, where she purportedly contracted a freewill marriage with a Lahore-based man.

Judicial Magistrate (East) Aftab Ahmed Bughio passed the restraining order on an application moved by the state prosecutor, Muhammad Younus, who sought directives for the mainstream media and social media activists to not disclose the identity of the girl under Rule 18 (Prohibition on publication of names and addresses of children involved in cases or proceedings) of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2016.

The lawyers representing the girl’s parents and her purported husband Zaheer Ahmed seconded the plea. The rule reproduced in the two-page order issued by the magistrate reads, “No report in any newspaper, magazine or news sheet of any case or proceedings in any court under these in which a child is involved shall disclose the name, address or school or include any particulars calculated to lead directly or indirectly to the identification of any such child, nor shall any picture be published being or including a picture of any such child in the best interest of the child.”

The court said the bare perusal of the rule made it very much clear that the identity, address, and picture of the victims were prohibited to be published in the media to protect their lives and rights. “The application is allowed,” the magistrate ruled, restraining the media mainstream and social media activists from disclosing the identity of the victim. He instructed that the information thereof already disclosed would not be further shared.

He called for a copy of the order to be forwarded to the media regulatory authorities to ensure its compliance. The teenage girl was brought back to her hometown on July 24 after a Lahore magistrate allowed the Sindh police to shift her from a Darul Aman (shelter home) in Lahore to Karachi so that she could be produced before the relevant court.