PESHAWAR, April 20: An Arab woman married to a Pakistani requested the federal government on Wednesday to grant her citizenship and to ensure that she was not deported. The woman, Ms Shaikhan Muhammad Hamoud, said that she and her Pakistani husband, Juma Raz Khan had been on the run for some time to avoid arrest deportation.

Shaikhan, who was accompanied by her husband, told reporters: “I visited Pakistan on a valid visa and married Juma Raz of my own free will without any pressure.

“I am happy here and want to live with my husband for the rest of my life,” she said, adding that she was worried because police had been harassing her family and had laid siege to their home in Karak, a southern district of the NWFP.

Ms Shaikhan, who is 21 and the youngest among six sisters and five brothers, requested the government to extend her visa for an indefinite period and then grant her citizenship to enable her to live with her husband.

The woman, who can speak a little English, read out an application she has submitted to the federal interior ministry seeking citizenship, saying she is married to a Pakistani national.

“We have been legally married, with my full consent in the presence of three witnesses,” she said in her application.

For fear of arrest, the couple has been living in hiding in different places. They did not say where they had been staying.

Juma Raz Khan said he had been working in Fujairah for 14 years. For the last six years he had been a driver of his wife’s family.

He claimed that his relatives lived in the UAE and a few years ago, MS Shaikhan’s father had made a commitment to give his daughter in marriage to him and had received 100,00 UAE dirhams from him.

Mr Khan, who is 36 and can speak Arabic, said that after the death of Ms Shaikhan’s father his sons opposed the marriage and he was forced to leave the country about eight months ago. “When Ms Alhamdi came to know about it she got a visa for Pakistan and reached here on April 7 and the same evening we got married in Karak,” he said.

A nephew of Ms Alhamdi, he added, who had facilitated her visit to Pakistan, also reached here on April 11. Some embassy officials contacted them soon after and requested a meeting at a five-star hotel in Peshawar.

He alleged that during the meeting with the officials, his two brothers, Kabil Rehman and Sher Abbas, were arrested and kept in illegal detention.

Mr Khan claimed that a ‘false’ case had been registered against them at a police station in Karak city, charging them with keeping the woman in illegal confinement. He added that his brothers were granted bail by the court on Tuesday.

The couple has also filed a joint writ petition in the Peshawar High Court through advocate Zaffar Abbas Zaidi, praying the court to restrain the respondents, including the government and police, from arresting and deporting her.

A two-member bench of the high court comprising Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan and Justice Saleem Khan will take up the petition for preliminary hearing on Thursday (April 21).

The petitioners requested the high court to declare that they were married in accordance with law and Shariat, and that the woman was entitled to Pakistani citizenship by virtue of her being legally wedded wife of petitioner No 1 (Juma Raz).

They added that the respondents should be restrained from harassing and humiliating them.

The respondents in the petition are federal secretary of interior, NWFP home secretary, NWFP IGP, Karak district police officer, Karak district nazim, SHO of police station East Cantt and Peshawar capital city police chief.