[2025] EWHC 2637 (Fam)

The basic chronology can be set out relatively concisely.

The father was born in Pakistan in 1956 and is now aged 69. He grew up in Pakistan until 1975. That year he moved to Bahrain where he worked for 5 years. In July 1980, he moved to the UK on a fiancé visa. He married his first wife (‘W1’), AD’s mother, shortly afterwards. The father and W1, went on to have three children together. AD was born in 1981 and is now aged 44; his older son was born in 1984 and is now aged 41; his younger son was born in 1986 and is now aged 39. The father has one grandchild, aged 11; she is the daughter of his younger son.

Following his move to England, the father undertook a course before working for a few years as a gas engineer.

In 1988 the father founded a taxi company, which went on to enjoy some success. At some stage it secured contracts with the local authority to transport school children. The father worked as a taxi driver until the onset of Covid in 2020. He is licensed as a driver by his local council.

Sadly, the father’s first wife died in 2002 having been seriously ill for some time before that. At that stage, their children were aged approximately 20, 18 and 16.

The mother was born in 1992 and is now aged 33. She is a Pakistani national who has only ever lived in Pakistan. Until she came to England recently to participate in this hearing, she had never left her home country.

The mother comes from the city of KS in the North of Pakistan, where members of her family also live. The maternal grandmother (‘MGM’) lives locally, as do the mother’s step-brother and her two brothers (‘MU1’ and ‘MU2’). The mother’s older brother, MU1, was born in 1989 and is now aged 35 or 36. Her younger brother, MU2, was born in 1997 and is now aged 27 or 28. Her step-brother was born in the early 1980s (the mother’s evidence was either 1981 or 1983) and will now be in his early to mid-forties.

The mother was previously married to a British national, a marriage which ended in divorce prior to her meeting the father.

In 2017, while visiting Pakistan, the father was introduced by friends to a marriage bureau. As a consequence, his marriage to the mother came to be arranged. The father was aged 61 at the time and the mother was 25.

The mother, in her oral evidence, said that she was an independent person with a strong character; although her family had been responsible for arranging the marriage she had made the choice to do so. I gained the impression that, for her, marriage would remove some of the social stigma of being a divorced person. Although the father was significantly wealthier than the mother’s family, contrary to the suggestion made by the father, I do not consider that the mother was particularly motivated by financial considerations, although no doubt his financial stability will have been a factor in her decision.

The father says in his first statement that initially he believed the mother to be a 45-year-old virgin and only later discovered that she was divorced and was in fact younger than he had been led to believe. I reject this evidence. The mother’s age is clearly stated on the marriage certificate. From her appearance alone, the father could not possibly have thought she was in her mid-forties.

The parents were married on 10 July 2017.

It was suggested to the mother on behalf of the father that prior to the marriage the mother conspired with the marriage arranger to have the father killed following the marriage so that she and the marriage arranger could then marry themselves. I have no hesitation in rejecting this.

In the mother’s first statement at paragraph 6 she said that ‘during the marriage’ she lived apart from the father, even when he was in Pakistan, and that the two of them would visit each other in their respective homes. This assertion is inconsistent with her subsequent statement dated 6 December 2024 and with her oral evidence; it overstates the position. While there came a time from 2019 when the parties lived roughly as the mother describes in that statement, I am satisfied that in the early part of the marriage there were periods when they lived together.

Soon after the marriage, in about the beginning of September 2017, the mother became pregnant. According to the mother’s oral evidence, which I accept, the father remained in Pakistan for approximately 4 months after the marriage. He therefore will have returned to England in roughly November 2017. During that four-month period the parties were living in the father’s home in the village. They did not live together before the marriage.

According to the father’s passport (issued on 1 June 2018), he returned to Pakistan on 14 March 2018 when the mother was about 6 ½ months’ pregnant. The mother’s evidence was that during the period when the father was away she lived with her mother in what I understand to be another village on the outskirts of KS. I infer that she remained there after the father’s return, as it was her oral evidence that she was living with her mother at the time of A’s birth and that she remained there until A was approximately 3 weeks old.

A was born on 1 June 2018. On the basis of the mother’s evidence, she moved back to live with the father at his home in the village towards the end of that month.

From the father’s passport, it is clear that he left Pakistan and returned to England on 12 August 2018, when A was 9 weeks old. Thus, they lived together for about 6 weeks before that occurred.

The father then remained in England for a period of some six months, returning to Pakistan on 6 February 2019 when A was 8 months old. The father’s evidence (not disputed by the mother) is that in 2019 he began renting properties for the family in a town called GT, which on my understanding, is part of the larger KS conurbation. They initially rented a property for a short period of time, before moving to a second property also in GT. At some point they moved to a third property in GT. This third property, in my judgement, is the one which was rented in the mother’s name and where the mother and A were based over the Covid period.

The father stayed in Pakistan for 5 months from 6 February 2019, save for a two-week period in March/April 2019 when he travelled to Saudi Arabia for a religious pilgrimage. He returned to England on 15 July 2019 when A was 13 months old. The father travelled back to Pakistan on 19 September 2019 and remained there for just a month, returning to England on 22 October 2019. In my judgement, over 2019 the mother and A lived in the rented properties. When the father was in Pakistan he lived with them for some of the time, but also stayed in his home in the village. The mother would sometimes stay with the father in his home, but in my judgement it was more common for him to join the mother and A in the properties he had arranged to rent.

The father next came back to Pakistan on 27 February 2020, staying there for the remainder of that year. According to the mother’s oral evidence, ‘during Covid’ she and A lived in a rented property in KS, the rental agreement being in her name. She was referring, in my judgement, to the third rented property in GT; I infer that she continued living in this property throughout 2020. The mother’s oral evidence was that this was the property ‘where we had a fight’ (a reference to the incident on 26 December 2020). As had been the case in 2019, the father stayed sometimes with the mother and A in the rented home but also lived at his home in the village, where the mother and A would occasionally visit him.

It is common ground that the parties separated on 26 December 2020, following the incident when the father was beaten up by the mother’s brothers. A was aged 2 ½ at the time of the separation. During the 30 months of her life over which her parents’ relationship endured, the father was absent from Pakistan for approximately 12 ½ months. For the majority of the remaining 17 ½ months, the father spent a significant amount of time living separately from the mother and A at his home in the village.

In his statement dated 29 October 2024, the father asserted (para 9) after A was born he took on ‘the primary carer role of caring for her’. The chronology I have set out above demonstrates that this is patently untrue. The father was also wrong in that statement in asserting that he had remained in Pakistan until A was 5 or 6 months old.

Following the 26 December 2020 incident, the father was hospitalised for a period of time and, as a result of his broken legs, had limited mobility for at least a few weeks (and probably months) upon his discharge from hospital. After recovering from his injuries, the father remained living in Pakistan throughout 2021, albeit living separately from the mother and A. At some point during that year the mother and A moved to a further rented property before moving again to live at the home of the MGM, where the mother’s younger brother, MU2, was also living.

The father returned to England on 14 December 2021 (when A was aged 3 ½) and remained in England for the next 17 months. He came back to Pakistan on 9 April 2023, when A was just two months shy of her fifth birthday.

Upon the father’s return to Pakistan he resumed living in his home at the village. The mother and A either were or had been living with the MGM, but at around the time that A started at school they moved to live in their own independent accommodation in the city of KS (the precise date is unclear to me). It appears to be common ground between the parties that the mother would periodically bring A to the father’s house to facilitate contact with him, sometimes staying the night there.

At some point during 2023, A was enrolled by the mother at a school in KS. I have seen a short report from the school which suggests that she was doing well.

In early January 2024 the mother brought A to see the father at his home. On the mother’s case, this was a regular contact visit. The father’s case is that they came, having agreed that the father would take A to England to meet her siblings. He relies on a document which he says is a form of consent provided by the mother to enable A to travel, a document which the mother asserts has been forged.

A and the father left his home together in the early hours of 6 January 2024. They travelled to Lahore airport, but were prevented from travelling by the border police as A did not have an ID card and her passport was about to expire (it expired on 9 January 2024).

Instead of returning home, the father then took A to stay at the home of his friend MW in S village near Lahore.

At some point on 6 January 2024 a formal First Information Report or ‘FIR’ was made by the mother to the police in KS. In her complaint she alleged that A had been abducted from her in the violent circumstances I summarised above. The making of this report resulted in the story being reported in the local press in Pakistan.

On the father’s case, the day following his arrival at MW’s property (i.e. 7 January 2024), A began to make a series of allegations about how she had been abused by the mother and her family and made it clear to him that she did not wish to return to the mother’s care. Accordingly, on the father’s case, he decided that he would retain A away from the KS region and bring her to live with him in England once he had obtained the relevant travel documents.

The mother, as I find, had no idea what had happened to A or where she had been taken.

On 10 January 2024, the mother’s brother MU2 made a report to the UK police (initially online and then by speaking to an officer) that A had been abducted from his sister in violent circumstances. The mother did not know that A remained in Pakistan.

The father did not make contact with the mother until April 2024.

On 12 May 2024, as an entry on his passport shows, the father and A flew from Pakistan to London. He took A to stay at his home in a town in the home counties.

Following his arrival in the UK, the father sought to introduce A to his older daughter, AD. AD had become aware of the report in the press alleging that her father had abducted her half-sister.

Once AD knew that A was in this jurisdiction, she took it upon herself to contact the mother to let her know that her daughter was here. On AD’s evidence, during her conversation with the mother she drew attention to the fact that in 2017 a video had been sent to her older brother purporting to show her father abusing a young child and enquired whether a copy of this video could be made available as evidence against the father. On AD’s evidence, which I accept, she and the mother have not spoken since.

I have seen a record of the WhatsApp messages between the mother and AD. This shows that the phone call to which I have just referred was made by AD by WhatsApp on 20 May 2024 at 3.55pm. It lasted for 14 minutes, thus ending at 4.09pm. At 4.19pm (just 10 minutes later), the mother sent AD the controversial video by WhatsApp.

On 22 May 2024 AD made a report to the police, sending them the video via a secure link.