A poor man ended his life by swallowing poisonous pills after his 11-year-old daughter was given “Vani” (giving away a virgin girl for marriage as if a commodity, compensation) by a village council (panchayat) in Bhagwani Shumali area in the limits of Paharpur Police Station in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Before this tragic incident, the panchayat had also taken Rs 7 lakh from the poor barber named Adil. The influential local landlords took extreme action against Adil after it was revealed that his nephew and the daughter of an accused, Fareed, had been in contact with each other in the village of Bhagwani Shumali. Adil had to part with money, as well as his young daughter, as punishment imposed by a kangaroo court. All this drove him to the extreme step of committing suicide as he felt utterly helpless.
Fareed’s rich and influential family allegedly picked up Adil through Malik Inayatullah and brought him to their hujra, where a panchayat was convened hurriedly. During the panchayat, Adil was allegedly brutally tortured and forced to place his thumbprint on a stamped paper, according to which he agreed to give his 11-year-old daughter as “Vani” (compensation) to the family. Before this, the accused had also forced Adil to pay Rs 7 lakh as a fine for his nephew’s alleged misdemeanour.
The forced marriage of his daughter, the extortion of Rs 7 lakh and the inhumane torture devastated Adil. Before killing himself by taking poisonous pills, he recorded his final audio message explaining the entire ordeal, The News International has reported.
In the message recorded before taking poisonous pills, Adil said that the accused, including Inayatullah and Fareed, had committed a grave injustice against him. Besides extorting money, they have forcibly taken away his innocent daughter, and he was not getting any help from the police or any other quarters. Pleading for justice, he urged the police and influential people living in the community that the culprits should not be forgiven and that his family and children should be protected.
Incidentally, the tradition of “Vani” (young girl/s given away as compensation), usually enforced in many rural and tribal areas of Pakistan, is a very primitive and savage system of so-called justice without the involvement of any law enforcement personnel. Under this system, tribal and rural jirgas have been using young virgin girls, aged between 04 and 14 years old, through child marriages, to settle crimes such as murder by men. This is modelled on the “blood for blood” tradition sanctioned and sanctified by Islam. This system of punishing young, innocent virgin girls from families of those accused of any crimes is widely practised in all four provinces of Pakistan, namely Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and KP.
According to Pakistan’s Law Commission, the principle of Sharia as defined in “Qisas” is the rationale for “Vani” (compensation) being created and followed. Adil’s suicide has brought the instant case out into open or else such cases go largely unreported as the police turn a blind eye to them. Every year, dozens of such cases happen nationwide, but very few, if any, are reported in the media.
Some more infamous cases are reported, such as one case in 2011. In this reported case, which created an outrage, a 12-year-old girl was handed over as wife to an 85-year-old man under “Vani” (compensation) for a crime alleged to have been committed by the girl’s father. In 2012, 13 girls ranging from age 04 to 16 years were forced into marriage to settle a dispute with an allegation of murder between two clans in Pakistan. The case was tried by elders from the two groups, with a member of the Balochistan state assembly, Mir Tariq Masoori Bugti, leading the jirga.
The jirga’s verdict included “Vani” (compensation), which is an order that the 13 girls must be handed over as wives to members of an opposing group for a crime committed by one man who ran away and could not be found for the trial by the kangaroo court. The sentence was carried out, and Bugti defended the practice of “Vani” (compensation) as a valid means to settle disputes.
