A Survey of Practices and Methods of Denial of Inheritance to Females in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

(ProQuest: . denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionArticle 23 of the Constitution of Pakistan states that "every citizen shall have the right to acquire, hold, and dispose of property in any part of Pakistan" whereas Article 25 further guarantees and terms the females' "rights to property and equality of citizen as fundamental rights" . It further urges to ensure for bringing all laws in conformity with the Holy Quran and Sunnah and to strike down any custom having the force of law as far as it is inconsistent with fundamental rights (GOP, 2012). To protect women's rights including the inheritance share further, Women Rights Bill 2011 was tabled and passed first by the National Assembly on November 15, 2011 (Khan, 2011) and later by the Senate on March 9, 2012. It is now part of the Constitution and any violation regarding deprivation of women's share in family inheritance can lead to legal imprisonment between 5 and 10 years or a fine of Rs. 1 million or both (Aaj News, 2012). Despite constitutional protection, there is wide gap between official law and actual practices in Pakistan (Mehdi, 1994). Law in Pakistan entitles women to have share in family land and property but people at large level use various illegal measures, to deny this right. Many times this is intentional and called deliberate discrimination (Santiago, 2001) with major aim to keep the inheritance in the family. Arif and Ali said that to avoid taxes in Punjab rich people transfer the property on the name of wife or daughters, however, the property documents are under kept by a family male (1998). Similarly, in Baluchistan lands are registered on the women's name but they do not get the land. With mutual understanding, the brothers share the land with one another while the females in return receives share in harvest or gifts from the parents family. In rural Punjab many times male after making understanding with the Patwari1 excluded the daughters and sisters names from the inheritance list on the pretext that they have surrendered their share whereas gift called Habba is also made on the name to the brothers once the land is transferred on the women name. To stop and discourage this, the courts have made mandatory for the women to appear in person and submit signed legal document called affidavit that they have not been forced to surrender their share. Many times males do not hesitate to have female's land share by making thumb mark documents, getting power of attorney and even making bogus documents (Ishaq, 2012; Mahdi, 2002 and Arif and Ali, 1998). On the other hand many people viewed women lack of capacity to deal with such affairs as laws relating land and property are quiet complicated, women especially in rural setting do not know how to use the law and the social and financial cost to go to court is very high. Women do not have enough financial resources to go in the courts. Also it is uncommon for women to make contact with the Patwari, police and court whereas the behavior of police and revenue department officials is not good, women do not know how to deal the concerned officials and mostly they are unaware of not only the required procedures and laws regarding getting their share but also even their share in family inheritance (Santiago, 2001; USAID, 2014; Beyani, 2001; Chaudhry, 2009). Research MethodologyDistrict Peshawar of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province constituted the universe of the study. Being the provincial capital, it was one of the areas in the whole Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that contained more or less equal proportional of rural and urban population who was having all sorts of properties ranging from agricultural and non-agricultural land and properties. Variation in the district on the basis of farm and property size, socioeconomic status and trend towards sharing inheritance with family females was also found high. It comprised of 234,434 households with 119,515 from urban and 114,919 from rural areas (GOP, 1999). …