Forced child marriage

A PAKISTANI woman who confessed to having an affair was forced to marry her four-year-old son to her lover’s three-year-old daughter as part of punishment imposed by village elders.

Mumtaz Mai, 45, was also beaten up and had her hair shorn off on orders of a traditional village council in Chaddar Bhanda, 280 miles south of the capital, Islamabad. She has been arrested as have two of the men who carried out the punishment, said police official Riaz Ahmed.

Adultery carries a maximum punishment of death by stoning in Pakistan, but such punishments have never been enforced. The forced child marriage was meant to compensate Mai’s family for her lost honour.