Pakistani court forces four-year-old girl to marry

A Pakistani woman had her head shaved as a punishment for having an affair and her four-year-old daughter has been forced to …

A Pakistani woman had her head shaved as a punishment for having an affair and her four-year-old daughter has been forced to marry the five-year-old son of her lover.

The local deputy superintendent of police Habib Ahmed Ghumman said the punishments were handed down to Mumtaz Mai by a traditional village jury in the central province of Punjab on Monday.

Passing sentence on Mai's affair with a married man, the council in the village of Jaddar Bhanda ruled that the couple's children should be married and her head be shaved.

It also ruled that her lover, Ghulam Mustafa, should surrender his bullock cart to Mai's husband.

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Deputy Superintendent Ghumman said police had responded to the case by arresting the head of the village council and one of Mai's brothers for initiating the trial, as well as Mai herself for violating an Islamic law forbidding adultery.

Another brother and the lover were still at large, he said.

Pakistani law forbids child weddings, even though this restriction is widely flouted. Earlier this year, a woman was gang-raped on the orders of a traditional village council in Punjab province because of an alleged indiscretion by her brother.

A court later sentenced six men to death for the rape in a trial which highlighted the abuse of women in rural areas. Every year hundreds of Pakistani women become victims of so-called "honour killings" that can be triggered by anything from adultery to failing to bear a son or poor cooking.