Sahar Gul (born 17 June 1998) is an Afghan former teenager who was subjected to torture and abuse by her husband's family in the town of Puli Khumri when she was illegally married as a child bride.
[2] Three of her in-laws were found guilty of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison, but later freed after an appeals court voided their convictions.
[6] Gul would tend cows and sheep and work in an orchard of walnut and apricot trees, and also made dung bricks for fuel.
Officials from the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs claimed that Sakhi's family intended to force Gul into prostitution.
[2][6] His father was accused of hitting Gul with "sticks, biting her chest, inserting hot irons in her ears and vagina, and pulling out two fingernails".
[6] In December 2011, six months after the marriage, Gul was discovered by her uncle and stepbrother and two police officers after they called at the house and heard a voice from the cellar.
Police arrested three members of Sakhi's family; Gul's mother-in-law, Siyamoi, her daughter Mahkhurd and Amanullah, the father-in-law.
In May 2012, the judge of a district court in Kabul declared Gul's three in-laws guilty, with the judgement broadcast on national television.
[2] In court the in-laws justified their behaviour as a result of their paying good money for a girl who was not pretty, who misbehaved and who would neither work as they demanded nor bear them children.
[2] Three people, Gul's mother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law were subsequently convicted for her attempted murder, and sentenced to 10 years in prison in July 2012.
The government prosecutor was not present, and the only person in court was the defence lawyer for the accused, even though both are required to be informed under Afghan law.