Court orders release of ‘same-sex’ couple

PAKISTAN’S Supreme Court yesterday ordered a couple to be released from prison after a lower court ruled the husband was a woman and said their same-sex marriage was against Islam.

A high court in the city of Lahore sent the couple to jail for three years last month for lying to the court by saying the husband, Shumail Raj, was a man.

The case has attracted widespread attention in Pakistan where the media has labelled the two the first openly acknowledged same-sex couple in the conservative Muslim country, where issues relating to homosexuality and transexuality are taboo.

The couple had challenged the sentence and the supreme court yesterday suspended their conviction and freed them on bail, their lawyer said.

“The judgment of the high court has been suspended and the supreme court has ordered their release,” said lawyer Babar Awan.

The high court has still to decide whether to annul the marriage.

The two were arrested last month after the bride’s family questioned whether Raj was really a man.

Raj, 31, married Shezina Tariq, 24, last year, after Raj had undergone two sex-change operations to turn himself into a man from a woman.

He said he planned to travel abroad for a third operation, but a medical team appointed by the high court deemed him to be still a woman.

Raj, who is heavy-set, has a full beard and looks like a man, told reporters last month Tariq was aware of the sex-change surgery.

Ms Tariq’s family wants to annul the wedding on the grounds that it is against Islam for two women to marry.

But the couple argue that they married to protect the bride from being sold into marriage to pay off her uncle’s gambling debts.

Ms Tariq says they are not homosexuals and they married because they are in love.