A 16-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim after he and two accomplices kidnapped her this month, her parents said.
Shahida Iftikhar and her husband Iftikhar Joseph were attending a wedding when their daughter, Diya Iftikhar, was abducted from their home in village Chak No. 126-GB Sheroana in Jaranwala, Faisalabad District, Punjab Province by Ghazaal Jutt, Afzal Jutt and Ramzan Jutt on Sept. 12, Shahida Iftikhar said.
Neighbors saw the gun-wielding suspects bundling Diya into a white Suzuki van and fleeing the scene, she said.
“We were terrified because Ghazaal and his accomplices were involved in the Aug. 16, 2023 attacks on churches and homes in Jaranwala,” she said. “They are notorious for their criminal activities, including sexual harassment of Christian girls.”
Four days later the couple received a video via WhatsApp in which their daughter says she has converted to Islam and married Ghazaal Jutt of her own free will, she said.
“We knew Diya was coerced to record this false statement, because she detested Ghazaal,” said Shahida Iftikhar, a member along with her family of the Brethren Church. “She had often complained to us that Ghazaal and his friends used to harass her when she went to her tuition center.”
The couple had immediately filed a complaint with police, but officers delayed a day before registering a First Information Report (FIR), she said.
“Meanwhile, we also pleaded with local influential Muslims, including brick kiln owner Ashraf Jutt, who is related to the accused, for the recovery of our daughter but were unsuccessful,” she said.
After the parents repeatedly visited the police station, officers briefly detained Ghazaal Jutt’s father, she said.
“But this was just to show us that the police were making an effort to find Diya,” she said. “They neither investigated him nor put pressure on him to help recover our daughter from his son’s illegal custody.”
Iftikhar Joseph said the investigating officer of the case, Sub-Inspector Abbas Gill, was not cooperating.
“Despite pleading with the IO for Diya’s recovery, he is not taking any action against Ghazaal and his accomplices,” Joseph told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “My wife and I work in local textile factories and do not have the money to pursue the case in court. We also made a video appeal for support from Christian organizations but so far we haven’t received any legal assistance.”
He said the suspects were pressuring them to stop drop the case, “but we will not stop until Diya is returned to us.”
“I’m also fearful for the security of my four younger daughters,” he added. “If the abductors are not arrested and punished, it will put them and the other Christian girls of my village at serious risk of abduction. I beg the police authorities to protect us from these predators.”
The family has not seen any documents related to their daughter’s alleged conversion and marriage, he said.
“We have no idea what they have written about Diya’s age, but we have her NADRA [National Database & Registration Authority] document which certifies that she’s just 16 years old,” he said.
Pending approval of a bill to change the legal marriage in Punjab Province, the minimum age for girls to marry is still 16. Nationally, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024 set the marriageable age at 18 only for Christians; if they convert to Islam, girls considered Muslims come under sharia (Islamic law), which allows them to marry younger.
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.
Church leaders and rights activists say it is imperative for Pakistan to address cases of forced marriage and forced religious conversion promptly, fairly and objectively, guarantee protection for the rights of the victims and ensure prosecution of perpetrators.
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.
