Court excludes rape from charge sheet against suspect in underage marriage case

A District East additional district and sessions court on Monday accepted the charge sheet against Zaheer Ahmed, a Lahore-based youth facing criminal charges of kidnapping and marrying an underage girl from Karachi under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act and other laws pertaining to kidnapping and human trafficking.

The court, however, excluded the rape charges from the charge sheet and sent the case to the concerned court for trial in accordance with the law. Ahmed and others were booked by the police for kidnaping an underage girl from Karachi. According to the police, Zaheer kidnapped the girl from Al-Falah Colony with abetment of other co-accused and married her in Lahore.

His counsel, however, denied charges and submitted that no case of abduction and force marriage could be made out as the girl had herself denied abduction before the Sindh High Court and stated that she had married Ahmed of her free will.

Earlier on August 17, a magisterial court had ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to take cognisance of the final charge sheet filed before it in a case pertaining to the alleged abduction of the teenage girl and her underage marriage in Punjab, after the investigation officer (IO) invoked the charge of rape.