Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry on Wednesday overruled a jirgaÂ’s decision to marry off five minor girls to settle a dispute. The chief justice was hearing a petition filed by anthropologist Samar Minallah against the custom of swara. The jirga, presided over by Pakistan Peoples PartyÂ’s MNA Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani had ordered that Amna, Noor, Bano, Benazir and Shehzadi be handed over to the family of a murder victim as compensation. The dispute began in 1997 when Miandad Banglani was murdered in a shootout between Hafiz Qamaruddin and Ali Yar Banglani in Jacobabad district. The CJ directed the district police officer (DPO) to investigate the matter in the light of the information given by Sindh Advocate General Mansoor Khan and Additional Advocate General Khadim Hussain Qaiser. He said that a report should be submitted within 15 days with the Supreme Court.
The DPO told the court that the fathers of the children had said that their daughters were handed over to the victim’s family; however, the men denied this in court. The CJ retorted that they [the fathers] deserved to be imprisoned. The CJ said that no one had the right to run a parallel judicial system through the ‘punchayat’ (village council), or of decreeing marriages of minor girls as compensation under the un-Islamic customs of vani and swara.