Courtroom Annuls Christian Girl’s Pressured Marriage/Conversion
Shahida Bibi. (ADF Worldwide)
LAHORE, Pakistan (Christian Each day Worldwide–Morning Star Information) – In a big authorized victory towards pressured conversions/marriages in Pakistan, a civil courtroom has annulled the wedding of a Christian lady who was given to a Muslim man as a baby and coerced to transform to Islam and marry him, sources stated.
Bahawalpur Civil Decide Afzal Baig on Feb. 12 dominated in favor of 25-year-old Shahida Bibi, declaring her marriage to Shehzad Akhtar Khan invalid and reversing her coerced conversion to Islam, stated her lawyer, Lazar Allah Rakha.
“The choose directed the Nationwide Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) to make a recent id card for Bibi, restoring her spiritual standing as Christian and deleting her marital standing,” Rakha advised Christian Each day Worldwide-Morning Star Information. “It’s a uncommon case the place justice has been served in a spiritual conversion matter.”
Her ordeal started at age of 11, when her mom, Naseem Bibi, eloped with Nadeem Akhtar Khan, a Muslim, in March 2012. Khan handed Shahida Bibi over to his brother, Shehzad Akhtar Khan, who sexually exploited her and, after she turned 18, pressured her to enter into an Islamic marriage, or Nikah.
Throughout this time, Shahida Bibi gave start to 2 youngsters whereas trapped within the pressured marriage; one was born with bodily disabilities and died after 4 years, Rakha stated.
Shehzad Akhtar Khan fabricated conversion and marriage certificates to guard himself from the anti-child marriage regulation, which restricts marriage with women beneath the age of 16. A invoice has been pending within the Punjab Meeting since April 2024 in search of to finish gender-based age discrimination within the authorized age for marriage by elevating it to 18 for each girls and boys.
Shahida Bibi’s marriage has been dissolved on all identification paperwork, and her former husband’s identify has been changed with the identify of her father, Robert Masih, the lawyer stated.
Shahida Bibi has by no means been to highschool and had no concept that Khan had fraudulently registered her as a Muslim married to him within the nationwide database, Rakha stated.
“Shahida Bibi had escaped from Shehzad’s captivity in 2024, however the worry of being pressured again would have remained if we didn’t transfer the courtroom for annulling the false conversion and marriage,” he stated. “She’s now free to begin her life afresh.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Worldwide supported the lawyer in in search of justice for the younger survivor.
“No person ought to endure the horrors of abduction and compelled marriage, additional being pressured to surrender their religion,” stated Tehmina Arora, director of advocacy, Asia for ADF Worldwide, in a press assertion. “We’re grateful that Shahida Bibi has acquired justice over her captor. Shahida is now free and in a position to start the method of therapeutic from this ordeal.”
Such circumstances are an amazing violation of younger ladies’s primary human rights, together with their spiritual freedom, she added.
Below sharia (Islamic regulation), which allows marriage on the age of puberty, the wedding age is decrease than the official marriage age, which varies between 16 and 18 years in Pakistan’s states. When women are pressured to transform, their mother and father typically are unable to cease the violation from occurring. These ladies and women typically are fearful for his or her lives and people of their households, stopping them from denouncing their captors, Arora famous.
“Whereas these pressured conversion and marriage abuses occur throughout the globe, they’re particularly prevalent in Pakistan,” she stated. “The federal government has a possibility to make a distinction, and they need to begin by implementing a uniform age for marriage to forestall these pressured kidnappings and marriages from occurring within the first place.”
Each individual beneath worldwide regulation has the best to freely select and reside out their religion with out worry of violence, she added.
“Each state, together with Pakistan, should be sure that their legal guidelines and insurance policies are according to their commitments to guard spiritual freedom beneath worldwide regulation, and that the legal guidelines they do have in place to guard women from these violations are enforced,” Arora stated.
The authorized victory comes as human rights leaders from throughout the globe are turning their consideration to Pakistan’s egregious human rights violations. In January, officers from the European Union (EU) issued a warning to Pakistan concerning its human rights violations, together with blasphemy legal guidelines, pressured conversions and different focused persecution towards spiritual minorities.
If not addressed, Pakistan’s commerce relations with the EU could possibly be jeopardized.
ADF Worldwide and allied attorneys are engaged in supporting ladies and women affected by pressured marriage, ADF famous, including that ladies and women in Pakistan, a lot of them Christian, are pressured to transform to Islam so sharia courts can validate their marriages.
Pakistan ranked eighth on Open Doorways’ 2025 World Watch Record of probably the most tough locations to be a Christian.
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