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Naeem Sher Tareen V. Beenish Ali and others,

PLJ 2017 Quetta 58 · Balochistan High Court

This case involved a husband who challenged his wife's decision to seek dissolution of their marriage through khula (a wife's right to end a marriage) in a Family Court in Islamabad. The wife had left the matrimonial home with their daughter and filed for khula there. Instead of contesting the case on its merits, the husband filed a constitutional petition in the Balochistan High Court asking for two main things: first, to have the case transferred from Islamabad to Quetta, and second, to have Section 10(4) of the Family Courts Act, 1964 declared un-Islamic and unconstitutional, along with directions to the government to amend family laws according to Sharia.

The High Court dismissed the petition on two grounds. First, it held that questions about whether a law conflicts with Islamic injunctions fall exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Federal Shariat Court under Articles 203-D and 203-G of the Constitution, which specifically bar other courts, including High Courts, from deciding such matters. Second, since the Family Court in Islamabad was outside the territorial jurisdiction of the Balochistan High Court, it had no power to order the case transferred.

The judgment matters because it reinforces the constitutional boundary between ordinary courts and the Federal Shariat Court on religious-law questions, and confirms that High Courts cannot order transfers of cases pending in courts outside their territorial jurisdiction.

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