Iranian police rescue Pakistani woman forcibly married after appeal to Sindh governor

ISLAMABAD: Iranian police have rescued a young Pakistani woman who was allegedly taken illegally to Iran and forcibly married to a Pakistani man, following an urgent appeal sent to Sindh Governor Kamran Tessori.

The action was initiated after the orphaned woman recorded a video message, shared through her family, pleading for help and warning that she would take her own life if she was not rescued within days. The video message was exclusively obtained by Geo News.

“Governor sahib! Please help me get rid of this man who has unlawfully entered into Nikkah with me. If you don’t help me in two days, I will commit suicide,” the woman said in her message.

The woman is the mother of an almost one-year-old daughter and is four months pregnant. Following immediate intervention by Governor Tessori, including coordination with Iran’s foreign ministry and a meeting with Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Reza Amiri Moghadam, Iranian police located and rescued the woman. She is now reported to be in a safe environment.

Governor Tessori later informed the family that he had contacted Pakistan’s Ambassador to Iran, Mudassir Tipu, and requested that arrangements be made to bring the woman back to Karachi by air. He also offered to bear all travel and related expenses from his personal funds.

According to the family, the woman’s father died 16 years ago and her mother passed away six years ago. She is the youngest among her siblings and had discontinued her education due to financial hardship. She was a resident of Nishtar Colony in Latifabad, Hyderabad.

Her brother told Geo News that she went missing around two-and-a-half years ago. “On August 14, 2023, an unknown person contacted us from an Iranian phone number and claimed he had married my sister,” he said, adding that the number was later switched off.

The family initially suspected that a local man had kidnapped her. According to sources, the suspect allegedly facilitated her transfer to another woman who arranged her forced marriage with a man identified as Imran Bhatti.

After failing to trace her whereabouts, the family registered an FIR at the local police station on September 18, 2023, but the woman could not be recovered at the time.

An unverified birth certificate shows the woman was born on March 25, 1994, and had passed her Secondary School Certificate examination in April 2010. In her video appeal, she stated that she did not possess a national identity card or a passport.

Copies of an unverified marriage certificate indicate that the Nikkah was solemnised on September 10, 2023, nearly a month after she left home. The document allegedly contains discrepancies, including incomplete details of the woman’s name, altered information about her father and a residential address listed as Rahim Yar Khan.

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The woman later managed to contact her family intermittently from unknown numbers, sometimes using a neighbour’s phone or a nearby shop. She told them she was living in Kushk-e-Nar city in Iran’s Hormozgan province under extremely poor conditions and urgently needed help.

Her brother said the family sought assistance from multiple authorities, including local politicians and the Sindh interior minister, but received no response. The family eventually turned to Governor Tessori as a last resort.

In her appeal, the woman also requested that her message be conveyed to the Chief of Army Staff if help was not possible at the provincial level.

Expressing gratitude, her brother said Governor Tessori had saved not only his sister’s life but also the dignity of the family.