KARACHI: The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday fixed the date for the hearing of an appeal filed alongside the decision of the Sindh High Court which had allowed 14-year-old Dua Zahra to decide her own fate.
A three-member bench of the peak court will be hearing the case this Thursday on Dua’s father’s appeal.
Dua had made headlines through the country after she had inexplicably disappeared from Karachi in April.
But later acknowledged that she had run away from her home to marry 21-year-old Zaheer Ahmed.
Subsequent the incident, her father — Mehdi Kazmi — had tried recovering his daughter, saying that:
Meanwhile she was underage, her marriage was illegal permitting to Sindh laws.
Nevertheless, the SHC — on June 8 — had issued a judgement in favour of Dua, permitting her to choose if she wants to go with her parents or her husband.
“In light of all the evidence, this is not a case of kidnapping,”
Said the three-page written order by Justice Junaid Ghaffar.
Disappointed with the court’s ruling, Kazmi submitted an appeal to the top court in which he entreated for an instant hearing of the case and called the SHC’s decision faulty.
The appeal also specified: “The medical records revealed Dua’s age to be 17. According to National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and academic documents, she is 14 years old.”