A British woman and her Pakistani uncle who she married and had a child with in a suspected illegal immigration plot could be sentenced to death by stoning.
The couple have been accused of adultery – which carries the severe punishment under Shariah law – by Pakistani prosecutors and clerics after the former company director in her thirties wed her mother’s brother during a visit to the country.
She is now believed to be back in the UK, but her uncle was arrested by local police this week and is behind bars as the investigation continues.
A Pakistani police report alleges the British woman willingly married him and later conceived his child to try to help him get into Britain.
But in a now deleted video posted online, the woman said she was ‘pressured’ into travelling to Pakistan to marry him so he could try to secure ‘documentation’ that would allow him to move to the UK.
A British woman and her Pakistani uncle who she married and had a child with in a suspected illegal immigration plot could be sentenced to death by stoning
A Pakistani police report alleges the British woman willingly married him and later conceived his child to try to help him get into Britain
After the wedding in April 2021 she moved into his home in a village in Pakistan for around a month. She says he ‘started having sex with me’ and she fell pregnant.
The woman, who later returned to the UK alone to have the child, says he has now abandoned her despite promising to help her financially.
She said: ‘He told me that I would help him in his travel to England and in return he will get a car, home and lot of money and our life would be settled.
‘Now he is not bothering about his baby and me. He has tarnished my life and I need help.’
After the villagers in Pakistan raised the alarm with the religious authorities, the uncle admitted to marrying his niece in front of local elders and Islamic clerics, according to a police report released to the Mail.
The report said the elders alleged ‘The matter behind the whole episode was just to get the entry in United Kingdom through the British Pakistani [bride].’
A legal opinion was obtained from the Department of Prosecution which described the woman and her uncle as ‘the real culprits,’ the report said.
A Pakistani security official. After the wedding in April 2021 she moved into his home in a village in Pakistan for around a month. She says he ‘started having sex with me’ and she fell pregnant
It added: ‘The relationship between maternal uncle and real niece has been revealed, the marriage between them is not permissible in Shariah.
‘Establishing marital relations on the basis of such a marriage is forbidden and falls under the category of adultery.’
Under Shariah law, convicted adulterers face being stone to death or lashed.
The report adds: ‘A case against the accused is being registered for the crimes.’
The uncle went into hiding after being reported and never made it to the UK, but this week he was arrested in Pakistan along with one of the witnesses to the marriage.
Speaking from the family’s semi-detached home in Britain, the woman’s father said: ‘We have heard what is happening in Pakistan, but we have not heard from her.
‘We did not want her to marry him. We did not approve the marriage and we tried to talk her out of it.
‘We don’t have anything to do with her anymore and I don’t know where she lives now.’