On Wednesday, a local court gave an investigating officer (IO) more time to submit a final challenge in the Dua Zehra case. This was after new information showed that the teenage girl was taken from Karachi and illegally married to Zaheer Ahmed in Punjab.
Zaheer, his mother, 20 other relatives, and cleric Hafiz Ghulam Mustafa, who are all said to be Dua’s husband, are accused of taking the girl from Karachi to Punjab and marrying her illegally when she was too young.
At first, IO Shahani filed an application saying that a police team from Karachi had already left for Lahore to arrest the alleged groom, Zaheer, and other suspects who allegedly helped set up the child marriage and gave the couple a place to stay afterward.
He also said that Zaheer and the other suspects who were on the run could not be caught yet. He asked for 10 days so that the police could catch them and bring them to Karachi so that the investigation could be finished and the final challan could be filed.
On the other hand, the state prosecutor told the court that a sessions judge had told the additional IG (investigation) on July 20 to change the current investigating officer, Shahani. But, he said, this court order had not been sent to the top police people.
He promised that the investigation of the case would be moved from IO Shahani to any other honest and qualified officer once the court’s order was given to the head of the police’s investigation department. He asked the judge to put off the hearing until then.
The magistrate agreed to the prosecutor’s and IO Shahani’s requests and put off the hearing until August 1. He or she gave the police high-ups time to submit a final challan on the next date.
Contrary to what it said before, the case about Dua’s kidnapping and marriage as a child was real. On July 16, IO Shahani told a sessions court that the teenager was not only taken from Karachi but also moved to Lahore, where Zaheer married her illegally as a child.
The sessions judge told the AIG (investigation) a day ago that the investigation of the case should be taken away from IO Shahani because he was “unprofessional and incompetent.” Instead, it should be given to a trained DSP with experience investigating similar cases.
Mahnur is MS(development Studies)Student at NUST University, completed BS Hons in Eng Literature. Content Writer, Policy analyst, Climate Change specialist, Teacher, HR Recruiter.
