According to accounts, a 14-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was pushed into marriage or conversion by a Muslim abductor.
48-year-old Khalid Masih, a Catholic worker in sanitation in Islamabad, reported that on June 24, his daughter Alina Khalid was taken from their house in the Khanna Pul neighbourhood of Islamabad by Haider Ali, a butcher in his neighbourhood.
Masih told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News, “Some neighbours told us that they had seen an unidentified girl outside our house on the day Alina went missing.” “After we started looking for her, I learned that Alina’s kidnapping was orchestrated by our neighbourhood butcher, 27-year-old Haider Ali.”
That day, he complained to Khanna Police, but he claims they did nothing.
“The accused had ample time to go into hiding after the FIR [First Information Report] was finally filed late on June 25,” Masih stated.
According to him, the Masih family found out on June 27 that their daughter had been married to Ali after being forced to convert to Islam.
“We learned of Alina’s conversion and marriage through her recorded court statement, wherein she allegedly stated that she had chosen to marry Ali and changed her religion,” Masih added.
According to him, Alina’s age of 19 is listed on her Islamic marriage certificate, the Nikah Nama, but it does not include her necessary national identity card number.
Rights campaigners claim that kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some of whom are as young as 10, are typically taken, coerced into becoming Muslims, and raped under the guise of these Islamic “marriages.” After the rape, the girls are often under duress to make false statements supporting their captors. Judges frequently return children to kidnappers as their “legal” spouses, ignoring documentation proof pertaining to the children’s ages.
Masih said that his daughter could not have voluntarily accompanied Ali.
“I don’t think Ali was in direct contact with Alin; she never left the house by herself and didn’t have a phone,” he stated. “His only goal in kidnapping her was to take advantage of her sexually. Alina was coerced into following her kidnapper’s instructions, just like the other victims.
He said, “Police have not been able to locate Alina or bring the suspect to court.”
Masih’s quest to find her will be extremely difficult.
“In addition to having diabetes, my wife has Hepatitis C,” he stated. The shock of Alina’s kidnapping has caused her health to start declining. Both of us are up all night grieving the loss of our child and thinking about how miserable she must be in captivity. May God spare us and keep our child safe!
The head of the Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry in Islamabad, Safdar Chaudhry, said that the police were acting slowly.
“After almost 26 hours of the incident, the FIR was registered on our intervention,” Chaudhry stated. “The accused could have been arrested if the police had responded promptly; however, their inaction allowed him to vanish.”
In order to end the exploitation of minorities’ underage females, the social activist demanded legislative measures.
“Police need to acknowledge their role and cease supporting the offenders. The same is true for Pakistani courts, he noted, which are giving these phoney weddings legal protection.
Fresh Bill
The Punjab provincial administration filed the Punjab Child Marriage Restriction Act, 2024 in the Punjab Provincial Assembly on 25 April, seeking to make underage weddings illegal in the province. The act would raise the legal age of marriage to 18 for both males and females. In the past, Punjab allowed girls to marry at the age of 16.
Anybody who arranges a marriage between a girl or boy under the age of eighteen or who marries one themselves faces two to three years in prison and a fine of between 100,000 Pakistani rupees (US$360) and 200,000 rupees (US$720). This includes parents and guardians.
At the moment of marriage registration, the girl or boy’s Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), passport, educational certificate, or other documents confirming both are at least 18 years old would be checked by the marriage solemnizer, secretary of the union council, and marriage registrar. The application for a marriage certificate must be submitted with attestation copies of these papers.
Rights advocates argue that while bringing up the legal marriage age to eighteen for both boys and girls will assist to reduce child weddings, some changes are necessary to guarantee that minority females receive equal protection under the law. They claim that these modifications would supersede all “special” laws and maxims pertaining to a girl’s age of maturity, such as Islamic law’s sharia, which permits girls to be regarded adults upon reaching puberty.
Although the government-moved bill was praised, a Christian member who was recently appointed as the chairman of the Standing Committee on Minorities Affairs and Human Rights claimed it lacked any provisions regarding minority girls who “change their faith” in order to marry.
Ejaz Alam Augustine stated, “We are working on an amendment to address this issue, and we hope that all parties in the Punjab Assembly will endorse our stance.” “We want to make sure that Muslim girls and girls from other minorities receive the same level of protection.”
Augustine, who served as Punjab’s minister for minorities’ affairs and human rights under Prime Minister Imran Khan’s administration from 2018 to 2022, claimed to have introduced a bill in 2021 that would have prevented forced marriages and conversions of minority girls, but that bill was shelved due to pressure from radical Muslims.
He told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News, “There’s some hope now, and I think this is the best time to make legislation that protects the girl child irrespective of her faith affiliation.”
Similar to the previous year, Pakistan was ranked seventh on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the hardest nations to be a Christian.
