Relatives of a 21-year-old Pakistani Christian woman who disappeared from her home on November 17 say they are heartbroken and terrified after she appeared in court again claiming she had converted to Islam and married her Muslim neighbor.
Monica Jennifer’s brother said he believes she was blackmailed and forced to abandon her Christian faith and family.
“She was a spirit-filled Christian girl who was dedicated to her faith,” said Raza Arif, 27, from Rawalpindi, Punjab. “There is no way she would voluntarily choose to leave her home, religion, and family without pressure.”
Arif said her Muslim neighbor Waleed Ahmad kidnapped her and manipulated and threatened her until she felt she had no choice but to leave.
Arif, a Pentecostal evangelist whose father works as a sanitation worker, said when Jennifer did not return home from work on November 17, her relatives immediately reported her disappearance to police that night.
“But instead of registering our complaint, they told us to come the next morning,” Arif told Christian Daily International Morning Star News. “Our First Information Report (FIR) was registered on November 23 only after some human rights activists intervened and forced the accused to change his faith, giving him enough time to marry Monica.”
Minority rights activists say the excessive delay in police response reflects the systemic discrimination Christians and other vulnerable minorities face in Pakistan.
Arif said Jennifer’s statements in court that she converted to Islam of her own free will and married Ahmad were made under pressure.
“My sister was being groomed for months,” he said. “She was not in a position to speak freely. We believe she remains under threat.”
Arif said Ahmad’s relatives warned the Christian family to stop pursuing the case and threatened them with blasphemy charges if they continued to challenge the marriage or demand Jennifer’s return.
“My elderly parents are scared but we have not stopped trying to get her back,” he said.
With the support of some local human rights organizations, the family applied to the Supreme Court’s one-man commission for ethnic minorities, Shoaib al-Sadr, to direct the police to take action on the complaint.
“Monica is a victim of a sham marriage,” Arif said, adding that Ahmad forged her nikafnama (marriage certificate) to protect her from legal action. “The document does not contain Ahmad’s national identity card number, and a fair police investigation would reveal that the signature of the Nika Karwan (marriage registrar) is also a forgery.”
Rights activists say Jennifer’s case fits into a longstanding pattern in Pakistan of Christian and Hindu girls, often from poor families, suddenly disappearing and later reappearing, claiming to have converted and married of their own accord. Families frequently allege kidnapping, coercion and grooming, but are often too scared to demand justice.
“When minority girls are declared Muslim, they are often warned that they will become apostates if they leave Islam, which can lead to targeted violence,” says Catherine Sapna, who works with Christian survivors of forced conversions and forced marriages. “These threats force girls into marriages they did not freely choose, exposing them to lifelong abuse that amounts to sexual slavery hidden in the name of marriage.”
Legal experts stress that true conversion requires free, informed and unpressured consent, a condition that is rarely met in such cases.
“A young woman’s ability to speak freely is severely compromised by the physical presence or indirect control of her environment by the kidnapper,” Christian lawyer Lazar Allah Raqa said. “Fear of being accused of apostasy prevents many girls from returning home.”
At least 421 cases of girls who were forcibly converted and married were reported in Pakistan between January 2021 and December 2024, according to the annual Human Rights Observer Report published by the Center for Social Justice, a Lahore-based research and advocacy group. The victims included 282 Hindu girls, 137 Christian girls, and two Sikh girls. Seventy-one percent of the victims were minors, with 22% under the age of 14 and 49% between the ages of 14 and 18.
Only 13% of the victims were adults, and the age of 16% remained unknown. The report added that the overwhelming majority of cases (69%) occurred in Sindh, followed by 30% in Punjab.
Arif said her family just wants to see her in a safe, neutral environment where she can talk without being intimidating.
“We just want you to protect our sister,” he said, his voice breaking. “She knows her family loves her. We want her to know she can go home without fear.”
Pakistan, where more than 96 percent of the population is Muslim, was ranked eighth on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List as the hardest place to be a Christian.
