KARACHI: Arzoo Maseeh, who had changed her name to Arzoo Fatima after converting to Islam, confirmed to Sindh High Court on Wednesday that she had a day earlier moved an application for leaving the Panah Shelter Home and living with her parents.

When called to witness box by the division bench comprising Justice Muhammad Karim Khan Agha and Justice Arshad Hussain, Arzoo stated there was no pressure on her for making the request to live with her parents.

Earlier counsel for her alleged husband Azhar Ali, Advocate Qantar Ali, had claimed that she was pressured by the shelter home caretakers for filing the application.

To a query of the court, Arzoo submitted that she had converted to Islam and now she was a Muslim.

Arzoo’s alleged husband counsel requested the court to allow her to live with her husband.

The bench observed that Arzoo was minor and federal and provincial law prohibits minors’ marriage.

Read more: Arzoo Maseeh case: SHC order authority to produce minor before the court

The bench observed the court would also decide the question of whether a Muslim minor girl could live with her non-Muslim parents.

The bench after hearing counsel for all the parties reserved its order on Arzoo’s application and it is expected to be announced later in the day.

Arzoo, a minor Christian girl of 14 years had purportedly converted to Islam and contracted a free-will marriage with one Azhar Ali in October last year.

She had moved a petition before the Sindh High Court for protection submitting that she was being harassed by police after she converted to Islam and married with Azhar Ali.

However, the petitioner and her husband went missing and the high court ordered police to recover Arzoo and shift her to Panah Shelter Home declaring that she was a minor and Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013 did not allow marriage of girls less than 18 years.

The police then registered a case against those involved in marring Arzoo with Azhar.

Arzoo later was recovered by police a produced before a two-member bench of the Sindh High Court. In her statement before the court, Arzoo disclosed that she was only 13/14 years old. She also refused to go with her parents.

An SHC bench on November 23, 2020 had ordered to keep her in Panah Shelter Home and directed to appoint a female representative of provincial social welfare department to take care of her welfare.

The court had 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.