Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. (Screenshot from YouTube)

LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Daily International–Morning Star News) – After multiple setbacks for a Christian family in Pakistan striving to recover their forcibly married/converted 13-year-old daughter, a federal court on Friday (Jan. 9) ordered police to find and present her and the Muslim who kidnapped her, sources said.

A two-judge bench of the newly constituted Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) ordered police to present in court Maria Shahbaz and 30-year-old Shehryar Ahmad before Friday (Jan. 16). Ahmad abducted her on July 29, forcibly converted her to Islam and married her, Supreme Court Attorney Rana Abdul Hameed said. Justice Ali Baqar Najafi and Justice Karim Khan Agha admitted the petition by Shahbaz Masih, Maria’s father.

“After our petitions for the child’s recovery were rejected by the sessions court in Lahore and the Lahore High Court, we decided to challenge those decisions before the FCC,” Hameed told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News. “We informed the court that the girl is a minor and is being subjected to rape under the guise of Islamic conversion and marriage.”

Lahore police colluded with the suspect, leading a magistrate’s court to discharge the family’s abduction complaint, Hameed said.

“The girl was forced to record a statement claiming she had willingly converted to Islam and married Ahmad,” he said. “She also falsely stated that she was an adult, despite official documentary evidence proving that she is a minor and below the legal age of marriage under provincial child marriage laws, which prohibit the marriage of girls under 16.”

Rights activist Safdar Chaudhry welcomed the court’s order, saying that despite repeated setbacks in Lahore courts, the Masih family had remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice.

“We repeatedly petitioned the courts, arguing that the girl was a minor and could not be allowed to remain in the custody of the accused, but our pleas were rejected solely on the basis of the child’s statement before a magistrate,” Chaudhry said. “We are grateful to the FCC judges for admitting our legal arguments and ordering the child’s production in court. We are hopeful that the court will take notice of the violation of child marriage laws and order legal action against the accused.”

Chaudhry, also chairman of Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry, is assisting the Masih family in the legal battle.

Masih, a driver and father of five, said that his neighbor, Ahmad, abducted his daughter when she stepped outside their home to go to a nearby shop. Masih filed a First Information Report (FIR) with Nawab Town Police Station in Lahore, but on Aug. 1 police informed him that Maria had recorded a statement on July 31 before Model Town Judicial Magistrate Hassan Sarfaraz Cheema claiming she had converted to Islam and married Ahmad of her own free will.

Rights advocates say such cases follow a familiar pattern in Pakistan, where kidnapped girls, some as young as 10, are abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and raped under the cover of Islamic “marriages.” Victims are often pressured to record false statements in favor of their abductors, while judges routinely ignore documentary evidence of age and return the children to their kidnappers as “legal wives.”

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

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

A similar bill has been pending in the Punjab Provincial Assembly since April 25, 2024. In Punjab, the minimum legal age of marriage for girls remains 16. Nationally, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024 raised the marriageable age to 18 only for Christians; however, if Christian girls convert to Islam, they are treated as Muslims under sharia, which allows marriage at a younger age.

Pakistan, where more than 96 percent of the population is Muslim, ranked eighth on Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List of the most difficult countries in which to be a Christian.

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