KARACHI: A court has ordered that no mention of the 15-year-old girl who vanished from Karachi in April and was later discovered in Punjab, where she allegedly entered into a freewill marriage with a man from Lahore, be made in the media.
Judicial Magistrate (East) Aftab Ahmed Bughio issued the restraining order in response to a request made by the state prosecutor, Muhammad Younus, who asked that the mainstream media and social media activists not divulge the identity of the girl in the underage marriage case in accordance with Rule 18 of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act, 2016.
According to the rule cited in the magistrate’s two-page order, “no report in any newspaper, magazine, or news sheet of any case or proceedings in any court under these, involving a child, shall disclose the name, address, or school, or include any particulars calculated to lead directly or indirectly to the identification of any such child, nor shall any picture be published being or including a picture of any such child in the best interest of the child.”
