Rawalpindi:
A case filed by a Chinese woman seeking divorce (Khula) from her Pakistani husband has taken a new VRI after contradictory decisions from High Court and a lower court, and raises questions about whether she can legally get Khula in Pakistan who will get custody of their 12-year-old daughter and whether the woman gets a Visa to stay in the country until the case is solved.
According to court documents, Chinese national Mir Guli married Shah Zeb, a trader from Charsadda, in China in 2011. A year later, she gave birth to a daughter, Sofia. Mir Guli claims that her husband, without informing her, recorded Sofia’s record with Nadra in Pakistan, effectively recalled her Chinese nationality but not registered Mir Guli as his wife. Illegal of her husband’s behavior she filed Khula in a Pakistani family law.
Her lawyer, Supreme Court Attorney Saeed Yousaf Khan, said the case took a great reversal when Shah Zeb’s legal team claimed to the family court that since marriage took place in China and was registered there, Pakistani courts lacked jurisdiction to decide the case.
However, Justice Sajid Mehmood Sethi from the Rawal Pindi bench in Lahore High Court gave the case that the case could actually be heard and decided in Pakistan, where Kona is a resident. The judge imposed the lower right to hear the case daily, considering he considered the woman’s visa status and instructed the Ministry of the Interior’s visa section to review her case.
Despite this, family law judge Taimoor Afzal Mir Gulis Khula -placement of jurisdictional reasons the same day, declared the High Court the case presumably. An appeal has now been filed for the session judge along with a separate petition of custody of 12-year-old Sofia, who currently lives with her father.
