KP Police rescue foreign citizen, arrest her husband in Bara after allegations of domestic abuse

KHYBER: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) police on Monday announced the recovery of a foreign citizen and her children from a house in Bara after allegations of domestic abuse and physical torture inflicted by her husband, who was also taken into custody. On June 18, in a written complaint submitted to the Khyber district police officer (DPO), the complainant claimed that she and her children had been living in an extremely difficult situation for the last 12 years as her husband had been subjecting them to domestic abuse and physical torture. The complainant alleged that her husband had deprived her and her children of freedom and was not fulfilling his legitimate duties as a caring husband and father. “He beats us and puts pressure on our lives on a daily basis. We have scars on our faces and other parts of our bodies due to his violent outbursts,” she alleged. The complainant appealed to the police to register a criminal case against her husband, after which the police filed a First Information Report the same day under sections 337 (shajjah), 342 (punishment for wrongful confinement) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Pakistan Penal Code, as well as the the KP Domestic Violence against Women (Prevention and Protection) Act, 2021. Acting upon the directives of the DPO, the Bara station house officer raided the home where the complainant lived. She and her children were rescued and subsequently shifted to a women’s police station for security purposes, while her husband was arrested by the police. In a video recorded by the police, the complainant in a mix of English and Pashto said that she had married her husband, a local, in 2014 and resided in Bara since then. She was grateful to the police for rescuing her and expressed a desire to be repatriated to her country of origin. In its annual report on the state of human rights in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2024, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan had reported a “significant” increase in violence again