MANSEHRA, April 23: A woman of Lassain Nawab area on Monday complained of her 15-year-old daughter’s forced marriage and blamed her misery on a local jirga.

Accompanied by husband, Hameeda Bibi told reporters here that Mohammad Naveed and Mohammad Hanif entered her house on the night of March 5 for theft but she woke up and managed to lock Naveed inside a room while Hanif fled.

She said she later went to a nearby seminary whose cleric, Qari Mushtaq, called a jirga to decide the fate of the ‘thief’.

“Instead of punishing Naveed, the jirga declared my 15-year-old daughter perverted and decreed that the two should marry and that Naveed’s sister marry my daughter’s fiancé,” she said.

The woman said she, her husband and daughter protested against the decree but the next morning, the two marriages took place ‘at gunpoint’.

She alleged that when the family contacted local police station house officer Shad Mohammad Khan for help, he detained her husband and freed him after taking Rs30,000 bribe.She alleged that the SHO supported the jirga and its decisions, and appealed to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to ensure early dispensation of justice to her.

When contacted, SHO Shad denied the bribery and illegal detention charges.

District police officer of Mansehra Ijaz Ahmad Khan told Dawn that he had formed a committee headed by DSP Habibullah Khan to investigate the charges.