Dua Zehra Kazmi, 14, who went missing on April 16 from the Golden Town area of Al Falah, has reportedly been found married in Lahore.
In a statement following her recovery, Dua claimed that she had gone to Lahore from Karachi willingly. According to the police, Dua claimed to have married Zaheer Ahmed, a resident of Lahore’s Shershah district.
In a video statement recorded by police, Dua commented that she came to Lahore of her own free will. The police have obtained the marriage certificate of the teenager, produced by Zaheer, and are in the process of verifying it.
A team of Anti-Violent Crime Cell (AVCC) conducted a raid in Punjab and recovered the missing girl, confirmed SSP AVCC Zubair Nazir Sheikh. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah also confirmed that Dua has been located in Lahore. Meanwhile, the police officials and Sindh Women Development Minister Syeda Shehla Raza reached the family’s residence in Karachi’s Golden Town to inform her parents about the development.
However, it is pertinent to note that a minor cannot provide her consent to marriage, and the 14-year-old’s age has been falsely stated as 18 years on the nikahnama.
Previous media reports also stated that a girl seen in CCTV footage was Dua, who had left the house willingly. These reports claimed that mobile phone records, school records, and versions of her neighbors, friends, and family members suggested that she had left her home apparently for freewill marriage. However, the family denied all such news and termed it a conspiracy against them.
The case
The ill-fated mother of the then missing person had earlier said that if her daughter is not recovered then she and her family will take their own lives in front of the Governor’s House. “I want my daughter alive. I am a mother, I will not accept her body like Zainab [Ansari] and I will keep the body outside the Governor House if she is found dead,” the mother said.
Following Dua’s disappearance, her father filed a police complaint and said that he did not have enmity with anyone. “My daughter wasn’t even going to school for the past one and a half years,” her father told The News.
He said that they lived on the first floor, explaining that his daughter had gone down to the ground floor to dump the garbage. However, she never returned.
“The news running on the media about the recovery of my daughter from Sanghar is fake. Even the girl seen in the CCTV footage going on a Suzuki vehicle is also the daughter of my neighbor who was going to work when she was captured on CCTV footage,” he said.
A number of raids had been conducted by police without any recovery of the girl and police claimed she may have left the house of her own volition. However, the family objected to this theory.
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