Dr.Humayra Abedin is a Bangladeshi woman living in UK and dating a Hindu guy.She was tricked in to coming back to her homeland under the pretext that her mother was ill,and when she reached there,was pressurized to marry another man,which she didnt.According to her parents she was not mentally fit(since she is dating a Hindu man).
Desperate to get out of there,Dr.Abedin knocked the doors of Bangladeshi courts for justice.
The Bangladeshi courts filed the verdict in D.r Abedin's favour,which I must admit shocked me(you dont get to hear such stories of judicial justice very often,especially in such cases),and showed that there is still some hope in Third World,for women and their liberation.
Dr.Humayara's story is not only hersbut of millions of South Asian woman from Lahore,Pakistan to Delhi,India to Dakka,Bangladesh,only that Dr.Abedin had the courage to stand for herself.
Unfortunately such cases of justice dont surface often,but rarely.Dr.Abedin may have got her rights back,but there are still alot of stories,much macabre,and untold.
For example a girl in Pakistan was put to wild dogs just because she eloped.
A Christian girl who came to Karachi,Pakistan to covert to Islam was raped.
In Balochistan,a province of Pakistan, five girls were buried alive after being shot.
These stories are just few of the millions of brutalities women are subjected to in South Asia(and I can guarantee you,being a Pakistani,that in Pakistan,there are many more).
Bangladesh has a relatively more secular constitution than Pakistan, perhaps that's the reason justice prevailed. In a purely islamic state that may not have been possible. All religions, in some way or the other suppress the human rights of women. Women's emancipication, therefore lies in the secularisation of our state and society.
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