RAWALPINDI: An 11-year-old girl who had ‘eloped’ with and ‘married’ her 22-year-old neighbour a week ago has been recovered by the police.

The girl, who is a student of the fourth grade and goes to a government school, will be produced before the court of an area magistrate on Tuesday who, the police said, will decide if she will be sent with her parents or allowed to stay with the man she ‘married’.

The father of the child came to the police when he found that his daughter had allegedly been kidnapped by a neighbour on Jan 22.

An FIR was registered with the Naseerabad police in which the father of the minor said his daughter had been missing since Jan 21 and that he suspected that his neighbours, Mansoor Iqbal, Nasir Iqbal and their sister Farhat Naz were involved in the abduction.

The police launched an investigation into the case, found the child in Abbottabad and brought her back to Rawalpindi though she is still to be reunited with her parents.

Station House Officer (SHO) of the Naseerabad police station Nadeem Zafar told Dawn that one of the accused, Nasir Iqbal, has been arrested and that the ‘bridegroom’, Mansoor Iqbal and his sister, who was also wanted by the police in the case, had already obtained pre-arrest bail.

The SHO said that Mansoor had married the child on Jan 23, a day after he took her away.

Though she is yet to be produced in the court of an area magistrate, Inspector Zafar said the girl had said in her statement recorded with the police that she got married of her own will, that she is sensible and can take decisions regarding her future.

When asked, the child’s father told Dawn that his daughter was a minor and was studying in the fourth grade in the local school. He alleged that she had been abducted by his neighbour and taken to Abbottabad.

“My daughter has been recovered and I will meet her on Tuesday in the court of the area magistrate. She is just 11-year-old, which is proved by her birth certificate, and was kidnapped,” he said.

According to a lawyer, the minimum legal age of marriage in Punjab is 16 according to the Children Marriage Act 1929.

Those found to have married a child are liable to be punished with six months in prison and a fine of Rs50,000.

Published in Dawn, January 31st, 2017