PESHAWAR, June 5: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday ordered judicial inquiry into the allegation that a local jirga had fined a petitioner for violating a customary practice called ghag under which a man could lay claim on a female for marriage.

A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth took exception to the non-compliance of its earlier order by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government about enacting a law for checking the practices of swara and ghag. The bench gave last chance to the government for introducing a law in this regard.

Lal Jan Khattak, an additional advocate general, sought two weeks time for activating all relevant heads of departments for tabling a proper bill in the provincial assembly to make such detestable acts punishable with sufficient imprisonment and fine so that the evil phenomenon was brought to a halt.

The bench ordered that it would be last chance for the provincial government otherwise the court would be constrained to pass an order regarding unwillingness of government to enact a law so as to prevent such sins and crimes and also to assess what kind of writ be issued in that regard. The bench was hearing a writ petition filed by father of two minor girls, Mohammad Nawaz, who alleged that a jirga comprising some members of local peace committee had ordered him to pay Rs275,000 to his two nephews because he had denied giving hands of his daughters to them in marriage.

The word ghag literally means “a call” and it stands for a one-sided demand from the male side to have engaged the female for a marriage.

The bench directed Peshawar district and sessions judge to appoint a senior judicial officer to conduct inquiry into the matter and fix criminal responsibility, if any, and submit the inquiry report before next date of hearing.

Advocate Essa Khan appeared for the petitioner and said that one of his daughters, Shaista, was about 13 whereas the second one, Zainab, was around 11. He said that the petitioner used to work as crane operator at UAE for the last 11 years, but owing to that problem he had to rush back to Pakistan on April 9 following which he was expelled from employment and his visa was also cancelled.

Mr Khattak said that as per the earlier orders of the court police had provided security to the family.

The chief justice asked him about the progress regarding legislation for banning the practices like ghag.

When the additional advocate general replied in negative the chief justice observed that such practices were un-Islamic, but still the lawmakers were sitting silent in the assemblies.

“Why law has not been made to make this practice a punishable offence? If we are on wrong side we should be told,” Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan observed. He said that such inhuman customary practices were bringing bad name to the country, Islam as well as to their culture.

“It appears that instead of a proper social order we have been living in an animal society where there is no rule of law,” the chief justice observed.

Advocate Khan Afridi appeared for the respondents including some of the jirga members and contended that the petitioner had levelled baseless allegations against them and no such incident had taken place.

The bench observed that presently it had not been dealing with merits of the case and would instead conduct judicial inquiry in that regard.

It was added that presently the court was concerned about absence of an effective law to deal with practices of ghag and swara, etc.