Doctor who was forced to wed can't be removed, court rules

Published on Friday 19 December 2008 20:47

AN NHS doctor who says her family held her captive for four months and forced her to marry in Bangladesh yesterday won a court ruling preventing her from being removed from the UK against her will.

Humayra Abedin, 32, from east London, was granted injunctions by a judge who warned that the British courts would act "swiftly and decisively" in cases where there had been a "gross abuse of an individual's human rights".

Mr Justice Coleridge, sitting in the High Court's Family Division in London, said the orders were to protect Dr Abedin "and prevent her being removed from this country again without her consent". For "anyone of any age" to go through a marr-iage without their consent was "a complete aberration of the whole concept of marriage in a civilised society", he declared.

Dr Abedin, who has lived in the UK since 2002 and is training to be a GP, returned to Britain on Tuesday.

She was freed by a Bangladeshi court on Sun-day after London's High Court ordered her release under the new Forced Marriage Act, which prohibits an individual from being married against their will.

On her return, Dr Abedin said that on 14 November she had been forced to marry a man of her parents' choice and went through a wedding ceremony "under duress".

She was in court yesterday as her counsel, Hassan Khan, told the judge that she had travelled to Bangladesh on 2 August on a return ticket to see her mother after being informed that she was ill.