UMERKOT: Women police stopped marriage of an underage girl with a youth in his late teens and arrested the groom, the nine-year-old bride’s stepmother and nikah khawan after raid on a house in Rahimoon Colony here on Monday.

According to the FIR lodged on behalf of state, police official said that they rushed to the locality after they were informed by a concerned citizen about the child’s marriage and found Dholo Sand, 19, dressed as a groom and the bride identified later as Uroosa attired in a wedding dress ready to tie the knot.

Police said that they arrested the groom, the girl’s step mother Sumera, a resident of Machhar Colony, Karachi, the nikah khawan Hanif Shah and the groom’s brother Khuda Bux Sand, who were residents of Rahimoon Colony.

The girl’s father Babar Shah, the groom’s father Chanesar Sand and a middle-man Wazeer Dahiri, who brokered the deal of the girl’s sale into marriage, had been nominated in the case filed under Sections 3, 4, 5 of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2013, and Sections 371-A and 371-B of the Pakistan Penal Code.

The area people told Dawn that Mirpurkhas division had become notorious for the sale of girls into marriage, especially underage girls. The latest case appeared to be clear case of human trafficking, they said.

Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2022