In a judgment that is the first of its kind in orthodox Pakistan, the judiciary has asserted its will in a ruling that will come to bear on matters societal. A court in Jacobabad in Sindh province has nullified the supposedly free-will marriage of a Hindu minor girl, who had been converted to Islam and then forced to marry the abductor. The judgment was pronounced on the basis of a petition moved by her family. The court has asked the police to register a case against her alleged husband, Ali Raza Solangi, and six others within 24 hours.

Thus did the Sessions court convey a resounding message against forced conversions and the marriage of minors. On the basis of the evidence and the documents that were furnished, the court declared that the girl appeared below the age of 18 and was not fit for marriage under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013.

Faced with a sordid tale of conversion and marriage of a minor, if not a child, the judge referred the matter of the girl’s custody to the judicial magistrate and directed the Jacobabad deputy commissioner to arrange/identify the nearest child protection institution for temporary custody of the girl where she could be kept till her production before the judicial magistrate for trial.

The Sindh government and police were given strict directives for the safety and security of the girl during her stay in the child protection institution. The girl, a Class 9 student, had left for school on January 15 and did not return home. Solangi also went missing that day. About a week later, police traced them when they received intelligence reports about the couple’s presence at the shrine of Amrot Sharif.

The couple claimed that they had contracted a free-will marriage after the girl embraced Islam at the shrine and was renamed. Pakistan is no stranger to this bizarre cocktail of conversions, abduction and marriage of minors, not to forget blasphemy. Regretfully though, the courts have never ~ at any rate till Wednesday ~ intervened to address such societal aberrations.

It is palpable that the magistracy and the higher courts are becoming increasingly assertive, and have thus attained the position as the fourth factor in the power play ~ after the military, the executive and the legislature. A strong contingent of police drawn from five districts was deployed around the court amidst fear of violence as local Hindu and Muslim leaders were present in the fraught town.

Reports suggest that the development per se and the court’s intervention have stoked the communal divide within Pakistan. A similar judicial intervention against blasphemy is direly imperative.