PESHAWAR, May 31: A woman on Thursday moved the Peshawar High Court against a local jirga’s decision, which stopped her father a decade ago from marrying her off under the tribal custom of Ghag.

Shabana Akbar, 22, had filed a human rights petition with the court requesting to declare the said decision illegal, unconstitutional and un-Islamic.

According to her, Nasrullah Khan, a resident of Jehangir Khan Sarkha area, laid a claim on her for engagement with one of his sons, but her family was opposed to it.

Nasrullah later threatened her father, Akbar Shah, of dire consequences and invoked the customary practice of Ghag under which a man could lay claim on a woman for marriage.

The petitioner said a jirga was convened on the instance of Nasrullah, which banned her engagement and marriage within her family and in her village. She said the decision of the jirga prohibiting the petitioner to be married according to her free will was cruel, arbitrary and against the fundamental rights.

The petitioner prayed the court to ban the said ‘inhuman’ tradition, which was not only detestable and hateful rather amounted to offences.

According to the agreement reduced to writing by the so-called jirga on March 26, 2000, the jirga has restrained Akbar Shah, father of the petitioner, from not engaging the girl in an area of around four kilometers. As Akbar Shah was not accepting the claim of Nasrullah, he was also ordered to pay Rs100,000 to Nasrullah along with five lambs and 80kg of rice.

The respondents in the petition are Nasrullah Khan and members of the controversial jirga including Maulana Noor Jamal, Maulana Abdur Rehman, Maulana Raza Khan, Haji Ziarat Gul, Mian Saifur Rehman, Haji Ziarat Gul and Mohammad Amin Jan.

The word Ghag literally means ‘a call’ and it stands for a one-sided demand from the male side to have engaged the female for a marriage.

Normally, the areas where this tradition is prevalent, especially in tribal areas, if a person makes Ghag or a claim on a girl no other party negotiates or seek engagement with the said girl till the time the negotiations fail between the party who claimed Ghag and the girl's family. This thing sometimes leads to murder and bloodshed when either the girl's family refuses to honour the claim or another party do not accept it and resolve to marry the girl despite the Ghag claim.