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 helper 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... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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