Physically challenged Muhammad Yameen, 60, is a resident of District Layyah. He is also a football in the hands of the Lahore High Court and two police stations that have driven him to his wit’s end in his 5-year-long struggle to recover his daughter, Sana Gul, who is still missing. His trial started when he sent Sana to study in the College of Nursing of Allama Iqbal Medical College in Lahore and appointed her aunt’s husband, the 40 year old Ahsan, as her guardian. A father of six, Ahsan was married to Sana’s aunt TMuhammad Yameen and was trusted by the family. He thought it would be impossible for him to leave his shop in Layyah and come to Lahore often and a guardian would make his life easier. Now he has to come to the city nearly every other day to look for his daughter.
While Sana was in Lahore, Ahsan used to visit her often in her college for one year. On January 22, 2007, Yameen found out from the college’s principal that his daughter had gone away with Ahsan 15 days ago and had not returned. The pretext, according to the principal, was that Sana’s grandmother had died and they had to go home for the funeral. To Yameen’s utter astonishment, it was later found out that Ahsan had married Sana, even though it is strictly haram (prohibited) in Islam to combine an aunt and a niece in wedlock.
After being pushed around by various police stations, Yameen approached the LHC, which ordered the Garhi Shahu police on August 23, 2010,to register an FIR against accused Ahsan, his brother Zeeshan, and father Usman residents of Larex Colony Garhi Shahu on the application of the petitioner-father. Two SHOs have come and gone but the FIR is still to be registered. At first, Yameen had tried to get an FIR registered in the Garden Town police station, that being the location from where the girl was kidnapped. Later, after hearing the rumours that she had been killed, Yameen had tried his luck at the Garhi Shahu police station, but to no avail. He had then moved the LHC, whose orders had fallen on deaf ears. First wife of Ahsan, the aunt of the young girl, is silent.
About three years ago, Ahsan was arrested by Garden Town police and sent to jail. The family of the accused had brought Sana to a court mysteriously where she had recorded her statement secretly under
Section 164 in which she, without telling the whole story, claimed that she had contracted a love marriage with Ahsan with her free consent. On that statement Ahsan was granted bail from the court, after which the father filed a petition for the cancellation of bail, alleging that the accused was an offender. Ahsan has been in hiding since then.
When contacted, Garhi Shahu Police Station Additional Incharge Manzoor Hussain told Pakistan Today that he had summoned both parties on Friday for investigation and patch-up as it was a matter between two close relatives, a mantra that his predecessor had repeated many times also. Every time this is done, Yameen comes all the way from Layyah while Ahsan’s father lives in the neighbourhood.
“Some relatives have informed that they have killed my daughter. All I want is to look at her once, to make sure that she is well. I don’t care about the rest. Is it too much to ask?” Sana Gul’s father asks Pakistan Today, with tears in eyes.
