A BLACKBURN father who is the subject of the county’s first forced marriage protection order, has lost his appeal over a restraining order preventing him from seeing his family.

Aurang Zeb, 43, appeared at Preston Crown Court to challenge the order imposed by Blackburn Magistrates' Court on November 17 last year.

Zeb was sentenced to 200 hours’ unpaid work after pleading guilty to harassing his wife of 24 years and two adult children.

The charges were brought on the back of Zeb being subject to an order from earlier in the year to stop him taking his daughter Rozina Akhtar abroad to marry.

According to Jonathan Clarke, prosecuting, Zeb reacted badly to the protection order and started harassing his family. He telephoned his wife Parveen Akhtar and ‘threatened to cut her tongue out’.

But David Ryan, defending Zeb, said the magistrates’ imposition of an indefinite restraining order was ‘unfair, unjust and unnecessary’ as Zeb’s wife had filed for divorce and he had left the family home.

Judge Stuart Baker, sitting with two magistrates Mr Dyson and Mrs Smith, agreed to reduce the unpaid work to 100 hours, added a 12-month supervision order, but declined to remove the indefinite restraining order.

He said: “It would be premature and speculative for us to specify any particular period of time at this stage.”