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| 30 April 2005 | Saturday | 20 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426 |
Arab woman, husband get pre-arrest bail
PESHAWAR, April 29: The Peshawar High Court on Friday granted interim pre-arrest bail to an Arab woman and her Pakistani husband.
A single-judge bench of Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan ordered the couple, Sheikha Mohammad Hamoud Alhamdi and Juma Raz Khan, to furnish two sureties of Rs20,000 each and directed police not to arrest them.
The bench fixed May 9 for next hearing of the petition filed by Juma Raz requesting the court to grant them pre-arrest bail, and to quash an FIR registered in Karak on April 17 in which he and his two brothers were charged with keeping the Arab woman in illegal confinement.
Ms Alhamdi, who is 21, told the court that she had come to Pakistan on April 7 on a three-month visa and the same evening she married Juma Raz in Karak.
In the morning when the petition was taken up for hearing, the couple was not present in the court.
The chief justice inquired about them and observed that their presence was mandatory and the petitioners should surrender to the court.
The couple had been in hiding since their marriage because of continuous raids by the NWFP police on their residence.
On the directives of Justice Tariq Pervez the couple appeared before the bench. The chief justice posed various questions to Ms Alhamdi and she stated that she had not been kept in illegal confinement.
She stated that her in-laws were under pressure from the government to surrender her so that she could be deported.
The woman said that she had not been pressurized by anyone to marry Juma Raz.
A panel of lawyers — Syed Zaffar Abbas Zaidi, Farmanullah Khattak and Mussarat Hillali — represented the petitioner.
Mr Zaidi argued that the FIR was illegal and was registered only to cover the illegality of detaining Kabil Rehman, a brother of Juma Raz, for three days at the East Cantonment police station, Peshawar. He added that Kabil Rehman was arrested at the behest of the embassy of the woman’s country.
Meanwhile, a two-member bench of the high court adjourned hearing in a writ petition filed by the couple, requesting that the federal government be asked to process her application seeking Pakistani citizenship.
The deputy attorney-general, Salahuddin Khan, appeared on court notice and stated that he had not received any instructions from the federal interior ministry. He sought time for getting instructions.
The court restrained the provincial and federal governments from taking any action against the couple till the next hearing.
The petitioners have stated that it was the legal right of Ms Alhamdi to get citizenship as her husband is a Pakistani.
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