PESHAWAR, May 25: A family court has dissolved marriage of a minor girl forced into prostitution by her in-laws.

The court had dissolved marriage of the girl’s younger sister a few months back on the same grounds, as they were trapped by a gang through marriages solemnized with two boys of the group.

The girls claimed that the group used to live like a family, marry girls with its member boys and then forced them into prostitution or sold them.

The girls, Naseem, 14, and Shamim, 13, were married to Mohammad Fateh and Fawad Khan respectively, both of whom are Afghans. Cases of both the girls were decided exparte as the boys did not contest their cases, fearing their arrest as mother of the girls had sent applications to the army monitoring cell, inspector-general of police and others.

The ordeal of the two girls started three years back when their mother, Mehr Jana, was approached by Aqeela, wife of Ghulam Khan, and Nasreen, wife of Mohammad Shareef. The girls belonged to an extremely poor family and their mother used do domestic work at residences. Their  father was a drug addict who had died few years back.  

Mehr Jana stated that the women begun visiting here home frequently and finally asked for marrying the two girls with their sons.  She accepted the proposal although the girl were very young. They were married on June 3, 1999.

Both the girls claimed before the court that their husbands were also minors. They claimed that initially, their in-laws started bringing strangers to their house at Hayatabad Township and forced them to provide them company.

Later, they alleged, the members of the gang started taking them with other women to different guest-houses and hotels in posh localities.

They stated that their mother was not allowed to meet them.

Once one of them was sent to a guest-house with two girls were the client allowed her to use his cellular phone. She contacted her mother through her neighbours and told her about the affair. In April last year, an application was sent by the mother to army monitoring cell and senior superintendent of the police.

The police reportedly recovered the girls from a brothel last year and handed them over to their mother.

Separate suits were filed by them for dissolution of the so-called marriages. In December, the marriage of Ms Shamim was dissolved by the court of Civil Judge Saadia Andaleeb. A few days back the same court issued a decree in favour of Ms Naseem and dissolved her marriage.