KARACHI, February 19: Handcuffed and surrounded by armed guards, Kanwar Ahson, a Mohajir man whose marriage to a girl from a rival ethnic group triggered widespread riots, was taken into custody on Thursday. Police refused to say where he was being held. Ahson was arrested in Rawalpindi near the federal capital of Islamabad.Looking haggard and frightened, Ahson was taken to an undisclosed jail from the Karachi district court on Thursday where he appeared on charges of having sex outside of marriage. He will stay in jail until his case is heard.
His bride, an ethnic Pathan, was reportedly in hiding after her father and members of her tribe sentenced her to death for eloping with Ahson.
Riffat Afridi's family accused Ahson of kidnapping their daughter, a charge he denied. He also has apparently given police his marriage certificate. According to him, the two eloped.
Undeterred, members of Afridi's tribe have threatened further violence unless Riffat is arrested. There were some reports in localnewspapers that attempts were being made to sneak the young girl out of the country and find her asylum in a western country. Her death sentence was imposed last week by a council of tribal elders who met in this southern port city.
Led by Tariq Khan, the council announced the death sentence saying Pathan ``honour'' had been violated, making it impossible to do anything else but either shoot or stone to death the young girl. Her father apparently agreed saying ``it was a matter of honor .. . Whether she has eloped or was kidnapped, we will kill her.''
Two people died and eight were seriously injured last week in bitter ethnic riots ignited by the Union. The riots shut down Karachi, home to 14 million people, most of them Mohajirs.
Ahson belongs to the Mohajir ethnic group which represents Indian immigrants who settled in southern Sindh in Pakistan, of which Karachi is a part, at the time of the Independence of the subcontinent in 1947. Pathans and Mohajirs have an antagonistic history. Ten years ago,thousands died in months of violence after a bus driven by an ethnic Pathan killed a Mohajir girl.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
