PESHAWAR, Nov 10: The provincial law department has prepared the initial draft of a law, banning the Swara custom and declaring it a penal offence, an official said here on Monday.

The department would finalize the draft after consultation with other stakeholders including lawyers, ulema and academicians, besides holding workshops for improving it, said the provincial law secretary Amir Gulab Khan.

He said that after being finalized, the draft would be presented before the provincial cabinet for approval after which the bill for enacting the law would be placed before the NWFP Assembly.

Under the age-old Swara custom, girls are pawned for settling feuds among rival families.

After enactment, the provincial law secretary said, the law would be called the NWFP Prohibition of Swara Marriages Act, 2003.

Presently, there was no law to curb the practices of Swara, Vani and other such customs. About three years ago, the Peshawar High Court, in one of its judgment, had also recommended enactment of such a law for curtailing the practice.

The law secretary described the tradition of Swara as being un-Islamic as well as being against the human dignity, saying that the practice should be eliminated.

He said that in the initial draft, Swara has been defined as “a marriage contracted as consideration to settlement of a criminal case.” The law department, he said, intended to improve the definition.

He said that under the proposed law, no person should contract, or allow it to be contracted, or demand for the contract of a Swara marriage under any circumstances.

Once the law was enacted, bridegroom, fathers of both the bride and the bridegroom or their male guardians, depending on a case to case basis, would be held equally responsible in case of the occurrence of a Swara marriage.

The draft, in its present form, does not contain provisions of prison term and the amount of fine. Clauses regarding the punishment would later be incorporated in the draft after consulting the stockholders.

Earlier, the department had prepared drafts of four proposed laws — NWFP Prevention of Violence Against Women Act; Prevention of Talaq-e-Mughallaza; NWFP Enforcement of Women Ownership Rights Act; and, the NWFP Qasamat Act 2003.

Through these proposed laws, the government intends to declare Tallaq-e-Mughallaza (three pronouncements of Tallaq in a single sitting) and depriving women of their inheritance in property rights as penal offences.

Similarly, the government intends to check honour-related murders through the introduction of the Prevention of Violence Against Women Act.