Bhakkar (Staff Report): At least twelve members of a panchayat (village court) have been booked for ordering the marriage of a 12-year-old girl to a 14-year-old boy for a crime that the girl’s brother had allegedly committed.
According to the Darya Khan police, the daughter of Muhammad Rustam was kidnapped. Her family accused another villager, Muhammad Idrees, of the abduction.
Later, a panchayat was called to settle the issue. The panchayat order the children marriage under vani – an outlawed custom for settling disputes.
Twelve people, including Rustam, Ghulam Akbar, Ghulam Qasim, Haq Nawaz, Muhammad Zameer and a cleric Mufti Muhammad Azeem who performed the nikah, are named in the FIR and police teams have been dispatched to arrest them.
