Shahbaz Masih of Sattukatla in Lahore is fighting for his daughter after she was placed in the custody of a Muslim man who kidnapped her, forced her to convert to Islam, and later married her.
Reports are that a 30-year-old Muslim kidnapped 13-year-old Maria Shahbaz on July 29 after she left home to go to a nearby shop. They later learnt that Maria had been taken by Ahmad, who lived in the same locality.
A few days after a First Information Report (FIR) with the Nawab Town Police Station was filed, police informed Mr. Masih that his daughter had recorded a statement in the court of Model Town Judicial Magistrate Hassan Sarfaraz Cheema on July 31. In the statement, Maria said that she had converted to Islam and had freely married Ahmad.
Upon receiving the news, he concluded that she must have been forced into making the declaration, since she is just a child.
“I’m still in disbelief that the magistrate admitted her claim that she was 18 years old, whereas her physical appearance also doesn’t support her claim,” he expressed.
Rights advocates say that girls who are kidnapped in Pakistan are sometimes as young as ten. They are forced to convert to Islam and raped under the pretence of Islamic “marriages”. They are then forced to record false statements in support of what their kidnappers say. Judges often ignore documentary evidence that details their real ages and declare them as “legal wives” to their kidnappers.
Maria, who has four other siblings, left school in 2021 and worked as a domestic helper with her mother to aid in her family’s finances.
Safdar Chaudhry of the Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry is helping the impoverished Christian family to recover Maria and says their legal team immediately filed a petition in the Lahore High Court for her retrieval but says a judge dismissed their petition.
“The judge rejected our petition with the direction to file a petition in the sessions court challenging Maria’s statement before the judicial magistrate in which she had claimed that she was an adult and had contracted marriage with Ahmad of her free will,” Chaudhry told one media source.
Chaudhry’s team followed the judges’ instructions and filed a petition for a hearing, which the sessions court admitted on September 3 of this year.
“We will provide documentary evidence that Maria is a minor and her marriage to Ahmad is in violation of the Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Act, which restricts girls under the age of 16 from contracting marriage,” Masih pledges. “We will also plead the court to order the police and the relevant courts to initiate criminal proceedings against Ahmed and all those who facilitated this sham marriage.”
The advocate says that ineffective implementation of the country’s anti-child marriage law is resulting in sexual exploitation of minor girls under the guise of Islamic marriage.
Despite fierce opposition from Islamist groups, President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari signed into law a landmark bill on May 29 to end child marriage. The legislation set the minimum age for marriage for both men and women at 18 years in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).The minimum age for girls to marry in the province is currently 16, while nationally, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act of 2024 set the minimum age to marry at 18 only for Christians.