LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday suspended two different orders of a sessions court that carried arrest warrants and sought surrendering of passport by a guarantor in a child custody matter involving a senior police officer and his Canadian wife.

An additional district and sessions judge had procured appearance of Waseem Ejaz, the guarantor, through arrest warrants and also ordered him to surrender his passport to the court and ensure production of the minor sons of the police officer. Ejaz challenged the orders before the high court for being unlawful.

Representing the petitioner, Advocate Hina Jillani argued that a guardian court had allowed Mirjam Aberras Lahdeaho, wife of Faisalabad RPO Ghulam Mahmood Dogar, to take the couple’s minor sons to Canada and the petitioner deposited a surety on behalf of the mother to meet a requirement to obtain guardianship certificate.

She argued that the sessions court on an appeal of Mr Dogar started proceedings against the petitioner as an assurer on the ground that the minors had been illegally removed from the court’s jurisdiction.

Ms Jillani stated as the guardian court had permitted the mother to remove the children, no violation could be attributed to the petitioner/assurer. She asked the court to set aside the impugned orders passed by the sessions court for being without legal justification.

Justice Muzamil Akhtar Shabbir suspended the impugned orders and issued a notice to the police officer for Jan 18.

Ms Lahdeaho had arrived in Pakistan last year to get custody of the children back with a claim that her police officer husband removed them from Canada secretly and unlawfully. Dogar had produced Qasim, 17, and Jafar, 13, before the high court after she filed a habeas corpus petition. However, Qasim attained adulthood during the pendency of the case.

Ms Lahdeaho, who also embraced Islam and was given a Muslim name Maryam, married Mr Dogar on March 6, 1997, in Lahore and stayed in Pakistan for over 12 years along with their three children before moving to Canada as permanent residents in 2009. Zahra, 19, was their third child. The lady flew back to Canada in 2018 after a guardian court decided the children custody in her favour.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2019