The 12-year-old Christian girl was reunited with her parents after being accused of by her Muslim neighbor two months ago, forcing her to convert to Islam and marry her, sources said.
Saba Shafique was accused of 35-year-old Muhammad Ali from outside his home in Walton Model Colony No. 2 district of Lahore Cantonment, Lahore, Punjab, on January 5, by Muhammad Ali, a source said. Ali first took her to Sialkot city in Punjab, where she prepared a fake religious conversion and marriage certificate on January 8th, then moved her to Shaheed Benajrabad city, known as Nawabsha in Sindh, rights advocates said.
On Wednesday (March 5), with the help of Sindh police, Lahore police raided a home in the village of Shaheed Benajrabad, recovered the mackerel and arrested Ali, sources said. The officers brought her back to Lahore the following day.
“I can’t express any joy when I hugged Sabah days later,” her mother, Rakil Shafik, told Star News for Christian Daily International Morning. “Her father and I have never been able to sleep properly until now, but now we’re finally resting.”
Sabah said Ali had told her that she liked her so much and would keep her happy.
“The day he took me out of my house, he asked me to take him to the bazaar. “After a while, my parents were worried about me, so I asked him to take me home, but he sniffed me and let me sit on the bus.”
She said she didn’t know he was taking another city of her, Sialkot. There, Ali arranged for the clergy to create a false certificate of religious conversion and carry out a false Islamic marriage, stating her age as 18.
“Afterwards, Ali forced me to record a video of myself converting to Islam and married him about my free will,” said Sabah, Catholic. “I’m 18 and I was forced to state that my parents shouldn’t take any action against us.”
A few days later in Sialkot, Ali took Saba to a relative village in Shaheed Benajrabad district in Sindh, fearing that police would act on complaints from his father, Shafik Masi. Ali filed a petition with the Hyderabad Session Court on behalf of Sabah, who is seeking legal protection for so-called marriage.
“While I was there, Ali did bad things with me, numbing my mind and body,” she said. “He also beat me whenever I was crying for my parents and said I wanted to go home. I was locked up in my room most of the time.”
Sabah said she was relieved when she saw her parents after police broke the door to their room in the early morning raid.
“I was so happy to see them. I was beginning to regret going with Ali without the knowledge of my parents. I don’t want to worry in the future,” she added.
Her mother said she didn’t know that her neighbor had bad intentions towards Saba.
“His actions with our children were so great that we didn’t doubt what was going on in his mind,” Rakir Shafik said.
Her recovery was made possible with support from the Christian paralegal organization Hards Pakistan.
“We are grateful to the senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party in the government of Sindh, for promoting the recovery of minor Christian girls,” Sohail Habir, executive director of Pakistan’s Haz, told Christian Daily International Morning Star News.
Habir said police first registered an aiding case against Ali, but the group’s legal team is now seeking additional charges related to rape, child marriage and other crimes.
Sabah was expected to retract her previous statement in court and explain how Ali seduced her to go with him, and forced her to be converted and married, he said.
Christian rights activist Napoleon Kaiyam traveled to Shaheed Benajrabad with a police team to retrieve the Sabah and said Ali initially denied sexually exploiting her, claiming he was “powerless.”
“But he admitted his crimes during police questioning,” Kaiyam said. “He is currently under the control of the Lahore Police Department and will face the consequences.”
Encouraging church leaders to use their influence to raise awareness about child acceleration and forced conversion/marriage, Kaiyam said it is important for predators like ants to adopt different tactics to seduce victims from home.
“In many cases, young girls are locked up in the false pretext of love, given them gifts, then they are emotionally blackmailed to go with the assailant,” he said. “Nevertheless, it’s aiding, because innocent victims do not recognize the underlying motivations of such predators.”
The typical Pakistan tempted girl is accused of a young 10-year-old, converted to Islam, raped in hiding her Islamic “marriage,” and pressured to record false statements in favour of the tempted, said rights advocates. The judge routinely ignores documentary evidence related to the age of a child and returns the temptation to the temptation as a “legal wife.”
According to the Center for Social Justice, recorded cases of adduction and coercion were 136 in 2023, the highest annual total ever. Among these, 110 Hindu girls were accused in Sindh and 26 Christian girls were accused in Punjab. The majority of cases occurred in Sindh, where 77% of women accused were minors under the age of 18, according to the Centre.
Unofficial sources suggest that forced religious converts associated with forced marriages affect as many as 1,000 girls in religious minorities each year.
Pakistan ranked 8th on the 2025 World Watchlist, where it’s the hardest place to become a Christian.
