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Pak girls pay for their brothers' crimes

     Mianwali: Five well-educated girls belonging to the same family in Pakistan's Punjab province have appealed both to the provincial and federal governments to save them from the clutches of Vani, and let them lead a free life. Vani is an age-old custom in Pakistan whereby a family whose male member is found guilty of committing a crime (against women or human life) gives away a female member to the victimised family's male member while adhering to the "compromise" reached out by the intervention of the local panchayat leaders. On attaining puberty, or becoming a major, the girl is bound to lead her life as the wife of the person to whom she was given as Vani. According to The News, the five Vani girls have appealed to President Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Punjab Chief Minister Ch. Pervaiz Elahi and the country's Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, to save them from their "spouses" who reportedly attacked their brothers recently after the girls refused to formally marry them.

    The girls pleaded that during their childhood they were given in Nikah (verbally) in a compromise in a dispute over a murder, and now they were educated while their "spouses" had turned out to be illiterate and vagabonds. In December 1996, the families of the girls and their "spouses" had reached a "compromise" through a Punchayat, which decided to give away the five girls of the convicted family, including the daughter of the convict, to the nephew and grand sons of the deceased as "Vani" as the convict family could not pay cash money. These girls were aged between five and eight at the time the Vani compromise was reached. Lately, after their persistent refusal to go away with their 'childhood spouses', fathers of the girls refused to hand over their daughters to their "spouses", after which the boys and their families began threatening to kidnap the girls saying "they were their wives". Meanwhile, the paper quoted religious scholars as saying that the bondage of their infancy or childhood "Nikah" was dissolved when the girls had attained puberty and they were free to marry on their own will. When contacted the family members of the 'male spouses' reaffirmed their stance that they had the full right on girls because they were given to them under a package deal as "Vani".