A married, 35-year-old Muslim neighbor of a 12-year-old Christian girl abducted her and took her to another province, where he forcibly converted her to Islam and married her, her father said.
Saba Shafique was abducted by Muhammad Ali from outside her home in the Walton Model Colony No. 2 neighborhood of Lahore Cantonment, Punjab Province on Jan. 5, said her father, Shafique Masih. Ali took her to Shaheed Benazirabad city, formerly known as Nawabshah, in Sindh Province, he said.
Masih, a Catholic who works as a painter after retiring from the Pakistan Army, said Ali prepared a fake marriage certificate on Jan. 8 that states Saba’s age as 18 years, though her birth certificate states she was born on May 16, 2012, making her 12 years and 9 months old.
“Saba’s physical appearance also doesn’t match the age stated in the alleged marriage and Islamic conversion certificates,” Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “Whoever facilitated this sham conversion and marriage should be equally punished along with Ali.”
Factory Area police intentionally stated Saba’s age as 15 to 16 years old in the First Information Report (FIR), though Masih had emphasized to them that her age as 12 years and 9 months in his complaint, he said.
“The police deliberately misstated Saba’s age, but when I protested, they told me that it would help in strengthening my case,” he said. “My lawyer, Rana Irfan, has filed an application to rectify her age as per her birth certificate.”
He lamented that more than a month has passed since his daughter’s abduction, yet police were making no effort to recover her.
“The police told me that they needed official permission to go to Sindh Province to recover Saba, but three weeks have passed and there’s no progress in the matter,” he said. “I’m visiting the police station on a daily basis to plead with them to act, but it seems now that they are not serious in finding my minor daughter.”
Masih added that Ali also filed a petition in the Hyderabad Sessions Court on behalf of Saba seeking legal protection for his so-called marriage. This move is a common tactic used by perpetrators to prevent a victim’s family from reclaiming their daughter.
“I’m sure that when Saba is rescued from Ali’s illegal custody, she will state the truth about her abduction,” Masih said. “She is an innocent child who has been forced to give statements in favor of the accused under duress.”
A Christian lawmaker in Punjab Assembly, Ejaz Augustine, expressed concern over the increasing cases of abduction of underage Christian girls in Punjab Province.
“Forced conversions and marriages of minor girls have become a serious crisis for the Christian community,” Augustine said. “A bill criminalizing child marriages is pending in the Punjab Assembly since April 2024, but it is very unfortunate that despite our repeated demands for its passage, there’s been no movement in this regard.”
Augustine said that the four Christian lawmakers in the provincial assembly were also making efforts to bring a legislation against forced conversions of minority girls. But the lawmaker, who has also served as a former minister for human rights, said that the inordinate delay in passing the anti-child marriage legislation showed elements were working against it behind the scenes.
“These vested interests have already blocked a federal legislation seeking criminalization of forced conversions in 2021, and they are now again active to stop Punjab from raising the legal age for marriage for both boys and girls to 18,” he told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “The provincial government must foil the nefarious designs of such groups by passing the bill as soon as possible.”
Church of Pakistan Moderator Bishop Azad Marshall also demanded the enactment and enforcement of the child marriage bill.
“Raising the minimum age for marriage to 18 is a safeguard against child marriages and forced conversions,” he said. “There’s no reason why the government should keep the bill pending as it may help in curbing the abductions and forced conversions of Christian girls.”
The church leadership has repeatedly urged the government to take decisive action against these criminal practices and ensure justice to the victims, he added.
Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic “marriages” and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their “legal wives.”
Recorded cases of abduction and forced conversion numbered 136 in 2023, the highest annual total ever, according to the Center for Social Justice. Among these, 110 Hindu girls were abducted in Sindh Province and 26 Christian girls in Punjab Province. A majority of incidents took place in Sindh, where 77 percent of the abducted females were minors under the age of 18, according to the center.
Unofficial sources suggest that forced religious conversions linked to forced marriages affect as many as 1,000 girls belonging to religious minorities annually.
Pakistan ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, as it was the previous year.
