Law protects woman from forced marriage

LONDON – In a case closely watched by human rights groups, a Bangladeshi physician living in London whose parents wanted to force her into an arranged marriage cannot be made to return to her native land against her will, Britain’s highest court ruled Friday.

The decision protects Humayra Abedin from being coerced by her family into returning to Bangladesh from Britain, where she has lived for the past six years. Earlier this week, Abedin, 32, arrived back in London after spending months in Bangladesh – allegedly as the prisoner of parents who had tricked her into coming home and pressured her into an unwanted marriage.

The case has drawn national attention in Britain, where stories abound of women, particularly from the country’s large South Asian population, being married off against their will to men in their homelands. Last year, a law protecting women from such relationships came into effect in Britain, and Abedin was among the first to benefit from it, one of her lawyers said.

Abedin had flown back to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, in August after being told that her mother was ill. But once she reached the family home, Abedin was “manhandled into the property by a number of people and immediately locked in a room,” according to papers filed by her British attorneys.

Her family checked her into a mental hospital, where she says she was held for three months and forced to take anti-psychotic drugs. In mid-November, her resistance worn down, she married the man her parents had chosen for her, although she had a boyfriend in England.