Islamabad, Dec 20: Pakistan's Human Rights Commission hailed today a landmark Supreme Court ruling that a Muslim woman who married for love had been entitled to choose her husband without her parents' consent. The woman's father has been fighting a legal battle to invalidate the 1996 marriage, which flaunted tradition in Pakistan, where it's rare for people to marry without their parents' permission.
Yesterday, the court rejected the final appeal by the father, Hafiz Abdul Waheed, ruling that his daughter Saima Waheed had been at liberty to wed whom she wanted.
``The consent of the wali (guardian) is not required and an adult and sane Muslim female can enter into a valid nikah (marriage contract) of her own free will,'' the three judges said in a 26-page ruling.
Hundreds of women are killed or maimed each year by close relatives if they take such a step, seen as betraying the family's honour - particularly in conservative rural areas of this Islamic country.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan - which had helped protect and give legal support to Saima Waheed after she married - praised the judgment.
``It is a very good ruling and we welcome it,'' commission official Zaman Khan told a news agency from the eastern city of Lahore.
Waheed stunned her family in 1996 when she married Arshad Ahmed, an English language teacher who was hired by Waheed's father to tutor his two young sons.
Waheed and Ahmed soon became friends, but when Ahmed asked Waheed's father for his daughter's hand in marriage, he was rejected. They married secretly. Bureau Report