Indian woman forced to marry man at gunpoint returns home

NEW DELHI: An Indian woman who claimed that she was compelled to marry a Pakistani man at gunpoint, returned to India from Pakistan's Islamabad Thursday, China's Xinhua news agency reported.
The woman, identified as Uzma, who is in her 20s, returned to India, a day after a high court in Pakistan ruled in her favour and ordered her deportation.
Flanked by officials of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, where she had recently taken refuge, and escorted by Pakistani security forces personnel, the woman crossed over to India through the land border at Wagah near India's northern city of Amritsar.
"Welcome home India's daughter. I am sorry for all that you have gone through," Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj wrote on Twitter, soon after Uzma entered this country.
Uzma had reportedly met her Pakistani husband Tahir Ali in Malaysia and fell in love with him. Earlier this month, she travelled to Pakistan where she claimed that she was forced into marriage by the father of four at gunpoint on May 3.
On May 12, she filed an appeal in the Islamabad High Court, accusing her husband of harassing and intimidating her and taking away her travel documents to stop her from leaving Pakistan.
"I had been terribly beaten ... tortured physically and mentally by the man," she said in her petition.
Her husband has rejected the allegations. "She is still my wife. Neither she has asked for divorce nor I have divorced her," he told the media in Pakistan.
However, the Islamabad High Court Wednesday ruled in her favour and allowed her to return to India. Her lawyer can now represent her in the court there, according to provisions of the law in Pakistan. — Bernama