Islamabad (AlArabiya)

A supreme court in Pakistan has ordered prison authorities to facilitate a young woman to marry her fiancé, a death row prisoner, inside the jailer’s office.

The Lahore High Court, the highest court in the largest Pakistani province of Punjab, issued orders on the petition of a woman Laiba Seher, 27, who pleaded that marrying her childhood fiancé was her fundamental right but jail authorities had refused her earlier request.

Her fiancé, Atiqur Rehman, 28, was sentenced to death along with three other accused in a case of kidnapping and demanding ransom eight years ago and has been waiting for the decision of his appeal against the conviction which is pending before the Supreme Court.

The judge observed that there was no law allowing marriages of prisoners serving sentences for serious crimes. But taking recourse to the fundamental rights enshrined in country’s constitution, he ordered the jail authorities to arrange performing of the marriage ceremony only and not to facilitate the girl to have conjugal rights with her would-be husband.

The girl was not totally happy with the order, but her lawyer said she could file another appeal for allowing her to have conjugal rights with her husband. A recent legislation in the country has allowed wives of prisoners serving long terms to pay conjugal visits to husbands for one or two days every month.

“This legislation is yet to be implemented in Punjab due to insufficient funds which prevented the authorities from creating the kind of facilities including construction of separate rooms required for the purpose,” said a jail official.

However, the official admitted that prisons in the port city of Karachi, the capital of neighboring Sindh province, had begun allowing conjugal visits to prisoners’ spouses.