Taking Amina Tarrar, 11, from the custody of her father, Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday granted her custody to her French mother ruling that a minor girl should live with her mother. Justice Manzoor Ahmad Malik passed the order on a petition filed by French national Ingrid Branden Burger seeking the custody of her daughter, Amina, from ex-husband Razzaq Tarrar, resident of Phalia Tehsil, Mandi Bahauddin district.
Earlier, police brought the girl before the court with Amina’s grandfather and uncle present. Razzaq, however, could not appear before the court as he was hospitalised in CMH Lahore. While the girl refused to go with her mother, cried in court and declared her desire to live with her father, the court ordered that she be given to her mother.
Wearing a scarf, Amina told the court, “My mother is a non-Muslim and I do not want to go with her unless she converts to Islam.” In response, the judge told Amina that the court had to consider the law in its decision and that the law categorically states a mother should have custody of a minor girl.
Burger stated in her plea that she married Razzaq in France and that Amina was born out of the wedlock. However, after some time their relationship soured and they divorced in 2001 when Razzaq ran back to Pakistan and illegally brought their daughter along with him, she said.
She said a French guardian court had already ruled in her favour. She said that when Razzaq brought Amina to Pakistan in 2005 and filed a custody case in the guardian court of Phalia it decided the case in her favour after which Razzaq went into hiding, and took their girl along. She said she had been fighting a custody case since 2005 and even the session court’s court in Lahore had given a verdict in her favour. She asked the court to issue orders to recover the girl and grant her custody.
Razzaq’s lawyer, however, argued his client had decided to hide so that Amina, being the daughter of a Muslim man, should not be given to a non-Muslim mother. However, Berger’s counsel reminded the court that the guardian court of Phalia, the session court and the French court had already awarded Amina’s custody to her mother. On this, the LHC also upheld the previous decisions and directed that Amina be handed to her mother.
Speaking to media, Amina’s grandfather Manzoor Ahmed said they did not want their granddaughter to grow up as “an infidel.” He said, “The judgment has shocked both Amina and our family.”
Forget religion, it’s the mother who gets the girl
