KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday ordered the provincial government to produce Arzoo Fatima from Panah Shelter Home before the court after it received an application from her requesting the court to allow her to leave the shelter house to live with her parents.

A two-member bench headed by Justice Muhammad Karim Khan Agha issued notice to the Sindh government and ordered the authorities to produce her before the court on Wednesday, observing that the court would pass an order on the application after hearing Arzoo.

Arzoo, a minor Christian girl, had purportedly converted to Islam and contracted a freewill marriage with Azhar Ali in October last year. She, earlier, had moved a petition before the Sindh High Court for protection, submitting that she was being harassed by police after converting to Islam and marrying the man of her own choice.

However, as later, Arzoo and her husband went missing, the high court ordered police to recover and shift her to Panah Shelter Home on the premise that she was a minor and hence Child Marriage Restraint Act does not legitimise her marriage. The police then registered a case against those involved in marrying Arzoo with Azhar.

Arzoo later recovered by police was produced before a two-member bench of the Sindh High Court. In her statement before the court, Arzoo disclosed that she was only thirteen or fourteen when she was married. She, however, refused to go back to her parents’ home.

An SHC bench on November 23, 2020, had ordered to keep her in Panah Shelter Home and directed the provincial government to appoint a female representative of provincial social welfare department to take care of her welfare. The court also restrained her alleged husband his relatives from meeting her in the shelter home and allowed only those to meet her whom she want to see.