Doctor wins protection from family who kidnapped her and forced her to marry

The doctor kidnapped by her family and forced into an arranged marriage was today given legal protection from them.

After hearing the full, terrifying details of Dr Humayra Abedin's ordeal, Mr Justice Coleridge granted a series of injunctions to protect her from her own parents.

The trainee GP returned to Britain on Tuesday after spending four months held captive by her parents in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.

Dr Humayra Abedin: Injunctions were issued against her family which ban them from 'pestering or threatening' her or trying to remove her from Britain



Dr Abedin, a Muslim, had moved from Bangladesh to Britain in 2002. She set up home in the East End and started going out with a 44-year-old Hindu man.

It was this romance with a non-Muslim man that prompted her parents to act.

In August this year, having been told her mother was gravely ill, Dr Abedin travelled back to her home country - but it became clear she had been lured back under false pretences.

Dr Abedin was in court today as her barrister Hassan Khan described how she was locked in a room in her parents' home and had her passport confiscated. Four or five guards stopped her from leaving.

Forced to take sleeping tablets, Dr Abedin was kept captive at home for a month before being taken by force to a private psychiatric hospital. Mr Khan said: 'Dr Abedin's hands were tied behind her back and her head was covered with a cloth. She was screaming for assistance and shouting loudly.

'She was then physically manhandled into an ambulance and was gagged by a person placing their hands over her mouth to the extent that she believed she would suffocate because she could not breathe.'

At the clinic where she was held for three months she was told she was 'mentally unstable' and was injected with anti-psychotic drugs.

On November 14 Dr Abedin was taken out of the hospital and forced to marry Dr Khondokar Mohammad Abdul Jalal.

Dr Abedin was only able to escape after she got a message to friends in England who alerted a women's charity in Bangladesh.

Mr Justice Coleridge issued injunctions against Dr Abedin's husband, her father Mohammad Joynal Abedin, her mother Begum Sofia Kamal and a paternal uncle which ban them from 'pestering or threatening' her or trying to remove her from Britain.

The judge described forced marriage as 'a complete aberration of the whole concept of marriage in a civilised society'.

Dr Abedin is expected to apply for her forced marriage to be officially annulled. Speaking outside court, she said does not want her parents to be prosecuted as she still loves them.