Pak court orders police to protect Afghan runaway couple

Islamabad, July 24 (ANI): A Pakistani court has ordered the police to protect a young Afghan couple who secretly married and are now fighting deportation.

Pakistani police arrested Miriyam and her husband, Hewad, both 22, three weeks ago after they entered the country illegally. The couple said if they were forcibly returned to Afghanistan, Miriyam's angry relatives would kill them. Miriyam accused her parents of trying to force her to marry her brother-in-law after her sister died.

"I have serious threats to my life from Miriyam's relatives, from her parents and her brothers. I am sure they can harm me here and if we are sent back to Afghanistan, they will simply shoot us," the BBC quoted Hewad, as saying.

The couple said they entered Pakistan illegally about three weeks ago and married secretly, after which they went to Abbottabad in north-western Pakistan, where U.S. troops killed Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, and were later arrested by the Pakistani police for not having valid travel documents.

The case has been complicated because an Afghan man gave contradictory evidence in court, stating that Miriyam was already married to his brother and had two children by him, the BBC report said.

Judge Dost Muhammad Khan has ordered police to provide the couple with accommodation, food, clothes and proper security. His ruling came as a relief to the runaway lovers.

The Afghan man who testified against them, meanwhile, was arrested.

According to analysts, however, the court's decision to protect the couple in these circumstances is rare. Women's rights in Afghanistan are in jeopardy, activists said, as NATO troops prepare to leave the country in 2014 and Kabul seeks a deal with the Taliban, who repressed women during their time in power from 1996-2001. (ANI)