Asian Window

Humayra Abedin, a doctor from east London, was held hostage and forced into marriage when she visited her parents in Bangladesh. She was freed from her vows on the orders of a Bangladeshi court soon after The Independent on Sunday highlighted her plight. She spoke to Nina Lakhani of IoS about her abduction:

“My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background.”

She was driven, kicking and screaming, to a private hospital, on the request of her family. During the journey, she was held down and gagged by three people as they tried to stop her shouting.

“This was the first time I thought, ‘this is it, I am dying’,” said Dr Abedin. “I begged them to stop.” And so began the nightmare.

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused. More:

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