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Pak has no law that deals with same sex unions

The recent discovery of a female couple in Pakistan has raised many moral, cultural, religious and legal questions which are not easy to be addressed.

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LAHORE: The recent discovery of the same sex female couple in Pakistan, unprecedented in the country’s history and taken with shock by the public, has raised many moral, cultural, religious and legal questions which are not easy to be addressed by the court of law which has already served them with a show cause notice to explain as to why they should not be tried under the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) for committing an ‘unnatural act’.

The court sent to jail the couple, Shahzina Tariq (31), the bride and Shumail Raj (26), the groom, (actually Nazia), from the Faisalabad district of Punjab after a medical examination revealed that the husband too was a woman. The two have made an appeal to the international community and President Musharraf to help them out in accordance with his agenda of making Pakistan an enlightened, moderate and liberal state. Drenched in tears in the police van as Raj was being transported to a Lahore Jail and Shahzina to a Faisalabad Jail, they told reporters that if nothing works out, they would commit suicide. If convicted, the couple will face a minimum two-year jail and a maximum life imprisonment under section 337 of the PPC which deals with homosexuality.   

Shumail, who had started experiencing hormonal changes in his adolescence of facial hair and deepening of his voice, had gone through two sex reassignment operations.

Shahzina says, “It is none of Shumail’s fault because I was the one who proposed to him for marriage and asked him to save me from my father and uncle who wanted to sell my hand off in marriage to an old man for Rs 15 lakh to pay off their gambling debts.”

But as they say, the law is above all, the judge, ruled: “Islam and the law of our country do not allow a marriage of such kind.” Both the partners got married in September last year. Whatever the outcome, a same sex marriage case has neither been contested nor has it ever been adjudicated by any court of law in the country. Therefore, the lawyer of the couple is hopeful of a positive outcome. “We don’t have provisions in the Pakistani law to deal with marriage between people of the same sex”, said Advocate Janisar Baloch.

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