Police have not taken steps to forced conversion/marriage of a Christian girl lured in Pakistan on June 11, rights advocates said.
Elishba Adnan, 14, was taken from her home by Babar Mukhtar, a 26-year-old Muslim, and Albert Patras, a rights advocate based in the Bihari district of Punjab, added that Mukhtar is reportedly married.
Adnan Masi, a sanitation worker with Brewara Tesil city authorities, quickly filed a report to the city police station in Brewara after learning that her daughter was missing, Patras said.
“However, to this day, police have not registered their first information report (FIR), significantly delaying legal procedures for the recovery of children and exacerbating the pain of families,” Patras told Christian Daily International Morning Star News.
He said the poor Catholics made repeated visits to the police and appealed to recover their daughter without success.
“After his own efforts failed, Masi contacted us for help,” Patras said. “When we contacted the police, we were told that the girl had converted to Islam and married her free will Mukhtar. We asked the police to show her documents based on her claim to convert and marry, but they refused.”
They then met with senior police officers and urged their subordinates to instruct them to register the appealer’s legal right, the FIR, but the officers have not yet filed a lawsuit, he said.
The delay in registering involuntary FIR and police, he said, gave the suspect plenty of time to convert the girl and forge her marriage to legally protect the crime.
Masi said he believes Mukhtar seized Elishba while visiting his uncle.
“Mukhtar was an acquaintance of my brother and previously visited his house frequently,” Masi told Star News for Christian Daily International Morning. “I don’t know if he seduced my child or threatened her to go with him, because even so, my daughter was a minor and she could easily be influenced by a much older man.”
The family took Elishba out of school to help her mother take care of her newborn twin siblings, Masi said. She is the oldest of his six children.
“The loss of Elishba’s disappearance has devastated our lives,” Masi said. “We have no information about her condition and happiness. If the police had acted promptly against our complaints, we could have saved her from Mukhtar’s illegal custody, but now many hours have expired and God knows what will happen to her.”
Rights activist Patras said he would ask police to charge Mukhtar under laws relating to accusations of accusations, rape, child marriage, forced marriage and sexual exploitation of children.
“Unfortunately, Pakistan does not have a law that criminalizes forced faith conversion,” he said. “Article 20 of Pakistan’s Constitution allows citizens to be free to profess their religion, and that forcing minors to change their faith in particular is a serious violation of their fundamental rights. The government must prevent forced conversions to protect minority women and minor girls.
State police leaders should notice an inverse delay in registering FIRs. Such delays will allow the perpetrator to carry out the crime with immunity, he said.
“Accounts like this develop a sense of anxiety and fear among minority communities, while delays in providing judges erode trust in the country’s legal system,” Patras said.
Usually, a tempted girl in Pakistan is accused of young people as young as 10 years old, converted to Islam, raped under a hidden gem of Islamic “marriage” and pressured to record false statements in favour of the temptator, rights advocates say. The judge routinely ignores documentary evidence related to the age of a child and returns the temptation to the temptation as a “legal wife.”
On May 29, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari signed the law a groundbreaking bill to curb child marriage, setting the minimum age for both genders at age 18 in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), despite intense opposition from Muslim groups including the Islamic Islamic Church (CII), the top Islamic Islamic Church (CII).
The CII declared that classifying marriages under the age of 18 as rape is not in accordance with Sharia (Islamic law).
A similar bill has been waiting for votes in Punjab Assembly since April 25, 2024. Currently, the minimum age for a girl to marry is only 16 in the state. Nationally, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024 set the age of marriage to 18 for Christians only. If they convert to Islam, the girl thinks Muslims will come under Sharia, so they allow them to marry young.
With a Muslim population of over 96%, Pakistan ranked 8th on the 2025 World Watchlist, where it is the hardest place to become a Christian.
