RAWALPINDI, Feb 4: Six minor children and their disabled mother are striving to keep the wolf from the door after their father abandoned them and did not pay the maintenance allowance despite being put behind bars by a court of law.

Shahnaz Begum, a resident of Loi Bhir, has been struggling to win the bread for her six children - four daughters and two sons - aged between seven and 15 years after her husband, Naveed Iqbal, divorced her and gave up the children after marrying another woman in 2000.

Shahnaz, a nurse by profession, could not continue her job as she lost her left leg that according to the doctors should be amputated as it has been damaged beyond treatment after an injury was infected with a virus. She moved the court in 2000 to get the maintenance allowance and won the case in 2002 after Naveed never appeared in the court.

On Monday, Shahnaz was present in the court of Azfar Sultan, a civil judge, while her ex-husband was not produced by jail authorities. “I do not take the children to the court as Naveed and his friends have been hurling death threats at me. My mother is old and my sisters and brothers have also ditched me,” the woman told Dawn with tears in her eyes. Three lawyers left me saying Naveed had threatened them and also because I could not pay their fee, she added.

A court in April 2002 ordered her former husband to pay Rs500 per month to every child but the respondent filed a review petition against the verdict and lost the case.

The court ordered the arrest of Naveed for not complying with its orders in September 2007 and since then he has been in the jail.

The family has been dependent on charity mostly coming from the well-off clients of her lawyers, she said, adding that life was very difficult due to increasing prices of daily-use items.

Her lawyers, Raja Amjad and Chaudhry Asif, told this reporter that Naveed could get bail after six months and be re- arrested if he did not pay the maintenance allowance.

They said the court could attach any movable or non-movable property of the man but Shahnaz has so far failed to discover any property owned by him.