The 13-year-old girl’s Christian father fought to recover her daughter from July 31, when a Pakistani court accused her and handed her custody to a Muslim who was forced to convert and married, sources said.
Shahbaz Masi of the Satukatra region of Lahore, Punjab, said that Sheryar Ahmad, a 30-year-old Muslim, had accused her daughter, Maria Shabaz on July 29th.
“When Maria didn’t go home, we started looking for her, but we couldn’t find her,” Masi told Christian Daily International Morning Star News. “I later learned that Maria was taken to Ahmad, who lived in the same area.”
He submitted his first information report (FIR) to the Nawab town police station, but on August 1st, police informed him that on July 31, Maria recorded a statement from the judicial magistrate Hassan Sarfaraz Cheema, the town of Model.
Masi, the driver and father of five children, said she was shocked to hear her daughter’s court statement.
“I still believe that the magistrate has admitted her claim that she is 18, while her physical appearance doesn’t support her claim either,” he 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.”
Maria left school a year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and worked as a national helper for people’s homes along with her mother to supplement the family’s income.
Safdar Chaudhry of Raah-e-Nijaat Province helps a poor Christian family who struggled to recover their daughter.
“The judge rejected our petition with instructions to file a petition at the Session Court challenging Maria’s statement before a judicial judge who allegedly claimed that she was an adult and married to a free-willed Ahmad,” Chaudhry said.
Following instructions from the High Court, Chaudhry’s team filed a petition for a hearing, which today (September 3) Session Court granted.
“Maria is a minor and provides evidence that marriage to Ahmad is in violation of Punjab’s Child Marriage Restraint Act, which restricts the marriage of girls under the age of 16,” Masi said. “We also ask the court to order the police and related courts to launch criminal cases against Ahmed and all those who promoted this fake marriage.”
The defenders have called for the Punjab government and police to ensure the implementation of anti-child marriage laws, saying that effective implementation of the legislation is causing sexual exploitation of minor girls under the guise of Islamic marriage.
On May 29, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed a groundbreaking bill to curb child marriage, setting the minimum age for marriages for both genders at the age of 18 in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), despite intense opposition from Muslim groups, including the Islamic and Indolescent Council (CII), the top Muslim group.
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.
