Indian woman says Pakistani husband illegally keeping sons, moves Lahore court for custody

The Lahore High Court on Friday heard a petition from an Indian woman seeking child custody and accusing her Pakistani husband of illegally keeping their two minor sons with him. According to Pakistani news outlet Dawn, the petitioner’s name was Farzana Begum who appeared before the Lahore court with her lawyer Bushra Qamar for the case.

Farzana’s lawyer told the court that the petitioner contacted the marriage with a Pakistani man named Yo­­u­saf Elahi Mirza of Lahore in 2015. The couple got married in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2015 and had two sons in 2016 and 2017. The names of the two sons in the court document obtained by Dawn were mentioned as Ibrahim and Ismail.

The court found that in 2018 the couple shifted to Lahore where Farzana found that she was Mirza’s fourth wife. The Indian woman’s lawyer claimed that the respondent tortured the petitioner and expelled her from the house. Mirza was also accused of forcefully taking Farzana’s children away from her.

The minors are in the UAE

During the hearing, Farzana told the court that she wanted to live with her sons in Pakistan. Meanwhile, a government law officer told the court that the respondent took the minors to the UAE, Dawn reported. Mirza did a lot of back and forth between the two countries since he had a business in the Gulf.

After hearing all the arguments, Justice Amjad Rafiq asked the petitioner’s counsel to assist the court as to how the minors could be brought back to Pakistan from the UAE.

To this request, the counsel replied that she would present multiple judgements and laws that would empower the court to get the “abducted minors” extradited from the region. The judge will now resume the hearing next week.

With inputs from agencies.