September 05, 2006	Tuesday	Sha'aban 11, 1427

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LAHORE, Sept 4: The elder sister of a 12-year-old Scottish girl has moved the Lahore High Court seeking an injunction against her repatriation to the UK. Tehimna Sajjad Ahmad Rana, the second of four children of Sajjad Ahmad Rana, who is now settled in Lahore upon the renunciation of his dual nationality, also requested the court to restrain the Punjab home department and the police which, she submitted, were making all possible efforts to hand over the girl to the head of the UK Citizenship Affairs for onward journey to Scotland where the petitioner’s mother, Louise Anne Farley, was living with her boyfriend, John Campbell.

The LHC is likely to take up on Tuesday the writ petition which sought a court injunction to the Punjab police, which, she submitted, was frantically looking out for a moment to forcibly take away Misbah Iram (Molly Campbell) under the pretext of an extradition treaty with the UK, that it should not use coercive measures against the members of Sajjad Rana’s family to take the custody of the girl for repatriation to the UK.

The petitioner requested the court to direct the police, which, she submitted, had made members of the family virtual prisoners in their own home by a round-the-clock surveillance, to wait for the verdict of a guardian court of Lahore which was already seized of the matter of deciding the guardianship of Iram.

According to the petitioner, she feared that the federal and the Punjab governments would show weakness in the girl’s case because the Scottish police had already registered an ‘information’ about Misbah’s departure to Pakistan without the permission of her mother and were probing the case on the lines that she was abducted from the lawful custody of her mother.

Misbah Iram Sajjad travelled to Pakistan along with her father and elder sister Tehmina, also the petitioner, on Aug 28, when, during their stay in Glasgow, Misbah contacted her sister desiring that she wanted to go to Pakistan.

The petitioner said her father was reluctant but she managed her sister’s arrival at the airport to then take a flight to Pakistan.

The petitioner stated that her father married Louise Anne Farley in Glasgow in May 1984 after she became a Muslim of her own free will and was renamed Shazia. Four children, Umar Ahmad, Tehmina Ahmad (the petitioner), Adham Ahmad and Misbah Iram Ahmad, were born to them between September 1985 and July 1994. The marriage was dissolved under the orders of a court there and her father, an affluent financial adviser, gave her a generous settlement after the divorce and came back to Pakistan along with the three children who had attained adulthood.

According to the petitioner, soon after the divorce her mother, whom she still loved deeply, started leading a life of her choice and also invited Campbell to live with her without marrying him. Misbah, according to the petition, was extremely unhappy with the mother who also seemed emotionally unstable and had remained in a mental asylum.

The situation adversely affected Misbah as she had been telling her father in Pakistan that she was extremely disturbed over the mother’s condition and about her lifestyle.

The petitioner also stated they decided to return to Pakistan also because living in the UK was becoming exceedingly difficult because of the racist tendencies there where every Muslim, particularly Pakistanis, was branded as a “terrorist”.