Christian Father in Pakistan Fights to Recover Daughter

LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – The Christian father of a 13-year-old girl has fought to recover his daughter since July 31, when a court in Pakistan handed custody of her to a Muslim who abducted her and forcibly converted and married her, sources said.

Shahbaz Masih of Sattukatla locality in Lahore, Punjab Province, said Shehryar Ahmad, a 30-year-old Muslim, abducted his daughter, Maria Shahbaz, on July 29 when she stepped outside her home to go to a shop on their street.

“When Maria did not return home, we began searching for her but failed to find her,” Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “We later learned that Maria had been taken by Ahmad, who lived in the same locality.”

He filed a First Information Report (FIR) with the Nawab Town Police Station, but on Aug. 1 police informed him that Maria had recorded a statement in the court of Model Town Judicial Magistrate Hassan Sarfaraz Cheema on July 31 that she had converted to Islam and married Ahmad of her own free will.

Masih, a driver and father of five children, said he was shocked to hear of his daughter’s court statement, and that she must have given it under duress as 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 said.

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.”

Maria had left school a year after the COVID-19 pandemic began and used to work as a domestic help in people’s homes along with her mother to supplement the family income.

Safdar Chaudhry of the Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry, who is helping the impoverished Christian family in their struggle to recover their daughter, said their legal team immediately filed a writ petition in the Lahore High Court for her recovery, but 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 said.

Following the high court’s direction, Chaudhry’s team filed a petition for a hearing, which the sessions court today (Sept. 3) admitted.

“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 said. “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 demanded that the Punjab government and police ensure implementation of the anti-child marriage law, saying that ineffective implementation of the legislation was causing sexual exploitation of minor girls in the guise of Islamic marriage.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on May 29 signed into law a landmark bill to curb child marriage, setting the minimum age for marriage for both genders at 18 years in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) despite fierce opposition from Islamist groups, including the country’s top Islamic body, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII).

The CII declared that classifying marriage under the age of 18 as rape did not conform with sharia (Islamic law).

A similar bill has been awaiting a vote in the Punjab Provincial Assembly since April 25, 2024. Currently the minimum age for girls to marry is still 16 in the province. 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, which allows them to marry younger.

Pakistan, whose population is more than 96 percent Muslim, ranked eighth on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian.

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