CAPE TIMES

Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman and founder of Gift of The Givers, said time had been of the essence in getting the mother and her children home.

A Cape Town mother, rescued from an allegedly abusive husband in Pakistan, was desperate to leave because she feared he would be given custody of her children.

The 37-year-old woman had allegedly been held captive for two years by her husband and his family in a rural area of Pakistan, unable to make contact with Cape Town relatives.

She was rescued last week and flown back to Cape Town on Tuesday night after Gift of the Givers paid for her flight.

Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman and founder of Gift of The Givers, said time had been of the essence in getting the mother and her children home.

He feared that if she remained in Pakistan her husband would get custody of her children, their 18-month son and her 11-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.

“The urgency was to get her out of there with a possible custody battle looming. She was in no condition to stay there. We just paid for the tickets.”

Sooliman said she was “very distraught” and would be unavailable for interviews until the specialist trauma counsellor who was working with her gave permission for her to talk to the media.

Sooliman said he had first heard of her plight earlier this week and hadn’t known whether to believe her story.

“I got information on Monday and an hour or two later paid for the tickets. It all happened in less than 24 hours. We weren’t sure at first if it was a hoax.”

He had asked for proof. A staff member in his office had spoken to her brother over the phone and quickly realised he was telling the truth. “This is not a hoax, this man sounds really sad,” the staff member told Sooliman.

It has emerged that social workers had gone to the village and the woman had secretly asked them to get her the number of the South African Embassy. She then put through a distress call.

Colonel Imraan Hayder from the SA High Commission in Islamabad said they received the call and it had been difficult at first to locate the woman because she had no idea where she was as she was never allowed out of the house. They found her in a village called Bharu Kahu that Hayder said was fairly populated, although very rural.

SA Police spokesman Vishnu Naidoo said the South African and Pakistani police had worked together to find and rescue the woman and her two children last week.

Gift of the Givers had then been contacted to ask for assistance.

Sooliman said his biggest surprise had come when his team went to meet her at the airport and discovered she had another daughter, 13, who had not joined her family in Pakistan.

She had detailed her two years of abuse in a 10-page letter to a Pakistani court. - Cape Times

michelle.jones@inl.co.za