Teenage girl taken to pay dead father’s poker debt

POLICE are seeking 10 men, including several tribal elders, accused of pressuring a Pakistani woman to hand over her teenage daughter as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt, officials said.

Nooran Umrani alleges that, despite paying off her late husband’s debt of $165, she was threatened with harm if she failed to hand over her daughter, Rasheeda.

The 17-year-old was to be surrendered as a bride for the son of Lal Haider, the man who won the card game years before.

Umrani said her husband was a gambler who ran up the debt at a poker game when Rasheeda was one-year-old. He promised Haider that he would get Rasheeda in lieu of payment when she grew up.

Koral Shah, a Hyderabad police officer, said both families belong to the Umrani tribe of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

He said a group of elders from the tribe came to Hyderabad in January to investigate the case and had ruled that, under tribal custom, the girl should be married to Haider’s 23-year-old son Abdul Ghani.

Police want to arrest the elders, he said. Police said the mother and daughter were in their protection and that an investigation was opened against Haider, his son and eight others.

“We are investigating the matter and vigorously searching” for the men, police chief Irfan Bhutto said.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf has vowed to give women more rights in line with his policy to project Pakistan as a moderate, progressive Islamic nation.