The bride, and human rights activists, saw red

In a case closely watched by human rights groups, a Bangladeshi doctor living in London whose parents wanted to force her into an arranged marriage cannot be made to return to her native land against her will, Britain’s High Court ruled Friday.

The decision protects Humayra Abedin from being coerced by her family into returning to Bangladesh from Britain, where she has lived for the last six years. Earlier this week, Abedin, 32, arrived back in London after spending months in Bangladesh -- allegedly as the prisoner of parents who had tricked her into coming home and pressured her into an unwanted marriage.

The case has drawn national attention in Britain, where stories abound of women, particularly from the country’s large South Asian population, being married off against their will to men in their homelands. Last year, a law protecting women from such relationships took effect in Britain, and Abedin was among the first to benefit from it, one of her lawyers said.

Abedin’s plight became headline news after she was able to get an e-mail or text message out of Bangladesh to friends in Britain.

She had flown back to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, in August after being told that her mother was ill. But once she reached the family home, Abedin was “manhandled into the property by a number of people and immediately locked in a room,” according to papers filed by her British attorneys.

Her family then checked her into a mental hospital.

“I was held there for three months and forced to take medications, the anti-psychotic drugs, [which] made things worse,” Abedin told reporters Friday.

In mid-November, her resistance worn down, she married the man her parents had chosen for her, though she had a boyfriend in Britain.

By then, lawyers in Britain had taken up Abedin’s case, and under the 2007 Forced Marriage Act, the High Court ordered her released from her parents’ custody. A judge in Bangladesh agreed.

Abedin returned to London on Tuesday, and expressed relief Friday after the High Court issued an injunction against her family ordering them not to harass, threaten or forcibly remove her to Bangladesh.

“It’s been very difficult. You can understand, being held captive against the will, it’s not been easy,” Abedin said.

Anne-Marie Hutchinson, one of her attorneys, said she hoped that Abedin’s well-publicized victory would embolden women in similar circumstances to seek legal protection from forced marriage, which the High Court judge called “a complete aberration of the whole concept of marriage in a civilized society.”

“The profile it’s received means that other people will feel that they can come forward and seek the relief that . . . they’re entitled to,” Hutchinson said.

Although most such cases in Britain have involved women of South Asian descent, Hutchinson rejected the notion that the case was merely about a clash of cultural values.

“Forced marriage is a breach of human rights,” she said. “It’s a human rights issue. This is nothing to do with culture or religion.”

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henry.chu@latimes.com