On May 16, a Pakistani judge invited him despite evidence that he had said he had converted to Islam, and handed custody of the Catholic girl to a Muslim who had been forced to marry him.
“My daughter, Jessica Iqbal, was unable to recite Karima (Declaration of Islamic Conversion) or answer any other questions about Islam in court,” Iqbal Masi told Christian Daily International Morning Star News. “It was very clear that she was forced to assert that she was willing to convert her faith, but the magistrate still allowed her to go with her aidator.”
Masi, a painter of Chonggi Amarshidu’s family in Lahore, Punjab, said that Azem Ulla, a 32-year-old Muslim neighbor, had taken her 16-year-old daughter from the house early on April 30th.
“I don’t know how Azem Ura was fooled to go with my innocent child,” Masi said. “We’ve been clearly seduced by the guy who’s nearly doubled her age when he’s stopped doing this with her, or since then, we haven’t done anything.”
Masi registered an abduction case against Ura on the same day, but police released him a few hours later, he said.
“Azem Ura was back home after her daughter hiding somewhere and showing that he wasn’t involved in her loss of failure,” Masi said. “I was very hoping he would reveal Jessica’s whereabouts during police questioning, but when they released him I was shocked. I asked investigators to at least restrict Jessica’s departure from his home until at least Jessica’s recovery, but he ran out three days later.”
On May 16, Jessica appeared before Lahore Attorney General Hassan Sarfraz Cheema and recorded her statement.
“My wife and I asked Jessica to reconsider her statement, but she said she was helpless,” he said. “She obviously had been under great pressure to speak in the favor of her adductor because she repeatedly said she was afraid of our lives.”
Masi said he and his wife are suffering from the happiness of their daughter.
“Our lives are completely devastated,” he said. “My mind is always thinking about Jessica, so I can’t focus on my work. This mental anguish kills me every time the days go by.”
Sohail Habir of Hard Pakistan, who supports the Masi family’s legal struggle, said that in such cases the victims are forced to make false statements as the temptation is threatening to harm them or their families.
“In Jessica’s case, the magistrate could clearly see that her religious conversion was untruthful, but sadly, he had no action,” Haville told Christian Daily International Morning Star News.
The group has now petitioned the Sessions Court to challenge the judge’s order, he added.
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.”
Amidst the spread of such cases, Pakistan’s Parliament on May 19 passed an important bill aimed at restraining, blocking and eradicating the marriage of children in federal capital territory by raising the legal age of both sexes to 18 years and prescribing wise punishments for violence.
A bill to criminalize child marriage has also been pending in the Punjab Parliament since April 2024. While pending approval of the bill, the minimum age for a girl to marry is still 16 years old. Christian activists say the enactment of the law will help curb the marriage of minority girls in Punjab, where more than 1.5 million Christians live.
Nationally, the Christian Marriage (Amendment) Act 2024 set the age of marriage to 18 for Christians only. If they convert to Islam, the girl is thought to be Muslims under Sharia (Islamic law).
Pakistan, a Muslim with a population of 96%, ranked 8th on the 2025 World Watchlist, the hardest place to become a Christian.
