HYDERABAD, March 6: An 18-year-old girl who has married of her own free will has requested the Hyderabad circuit bench of the Sindh High Court through a petition to restrain the DPO and the SHO from harassing her and her husband’s family and order police to provide them protection.

Parveen Chachar, the counsel for the petitioner Ruqayya, wife of Abdul Hafeez Rajpar, appeared in court on Thursday on behalf of her client, who had disappeared since filing the petition a couple of days ago.

The court had directed the Naushahro Feroze police on March 5 to produce the couple in court. Naushahro Feroze DPO Zulfikar Ali Larik told the court on Thursday that police were trying to trace the couple’s whereabouts and sought more time.

He said said police had raided the residences of respondents Nizamuddin Rajpar, Abdul Majeed Rajpar, Dawood Rajpar and Din Mohammad Rajpar, Ms Ruqayya’s father, but did not find any of them at home. Police had been directed to find the couple as soon as possible, he said.

Ms Ruqayya belongs to Padidan town of Naushahro Feroze district.

The court adjourned the matter to March 14 and ordered to dispense with the DPO’s appearing in court, directing that he would be represented by DSP from then on.

Ms Ruqayya said in the petition that if she and her husband were killed then the private respondents and police officers mentioned as respondents in the petition should be held responsible and the SHO should be directed to lodge an FIR against the private respondents.

She said that she had been betrothed to Abdul Hafeez but later their families developed a dispute over some domestic issues and started looking upon the proposed marriage with disapproval.

In the meantime, her relative Gullo, son of Majeed Rajpar, 45, proposed to marry her and her father gave his consent despite her refusal. She left the house and married Abdul Hafeez after her father’s cousins Nizamuddin, Abdul Majeed and Dawood pressurised her through police to accept the proposal.

She said that Padidan police had asked Hyderabad police to implicate her husband in a number of cases and Nizamuddin and Abdul Majeed conveyed threats through police that they would not let them live happily.

She said that the SHO of Padidan police station denied them protection from their relative who intended to kill her and her husband on charges of karo-kari. She had to keep changing places for constant danger to their lives, she said.

The DPO sought time to produce the couple in the court and said that police had raided the residences of Nizamuddin, Abdul Majeed, Dawood and Din Mohammad but did not find any of the respondents at home. Police had been directed to find the couple as soon as possible, he said.