Nasir Iqbal
By arrangement with The DawnIslamabad, May 24
The Supreme Court on Tuesday sent Neelum Ludhani, a 21-year-old girl who recently embraced Islam, to ‘safe custody’ along with her Muslim husband but allowed their parents to meet them regularly. A three-member bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar and Justice Saiyed Saeed Ashhad decided to take up the matter again on Thursday and ordered that the couple be kept at the National Police Academy under safe custody instead of the Women’s Crisis Centre, Islamabad.
Advocate Sardar Latif Khosa, representing the girl’s in-laws, had objected to sending her to crisis centre.
Misri Ludhani, the father of the girl, had requested the apex court through a complaint to recover his ‘abducted’ daughter. Already a case had been filed by him in this regard.
Despite persuasions from her father, a serving additional income tax commissioner, Neelum insisted before the court that she wanted to live with her husband, Amjad Shahzad, with whom she married one and a half months ago but was being shunted from one place to the other.
