Pakistan: Islamist Abducts 14-Year-Old Christian Girl and Forces Her Into Marriage, “May God Have Mercy on Us and Save Our Child!”

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A 14-year-old Catholic girl in Islamabad, Pakistan, has been kidnapped from her parents’ home by a local Islamist who forced her to “marry” him, Morning Star News (MSN) reports.

Khalid Masih, a Catholic sanitation worker, told MSN that local butcher Haider Ali kidnapped his daughter Alina Khalid from their home in Khanna Pul, Islamabad, on June 24. “Some neighbors told us that they had seen an unidentified girl outside our house on the day Alina went missing,” Masih said.

“When we began searching for her, I came to know that Haider Ali, a 27-year-old butcher in our neighborhood, had planned Alina’s abduction.”

The Masih family contacted the police, who took no action, MSN reports. Then, on June 27, the family learned Alina had been forced into converting to Islam and into a sham marriage. Ali lied about Alina’s age on the Islamic marriage certificate, falsely claiming she is 19.

“We came to know about Alina’s conversion and marriage after she recorded her statement in court in which she purportedly claimed that she had changed her faith and married Ali by choice,” Masih said.

Vehemently denying Alina would have chosen to marry Ali, Masih emphasized. “He has abducted her with the sole objective of exploiting her sexually. Like all other victims, Alina, too, was forced to do what her abductor said.”

“[My wife’s] health has started to deteriorate due to the trauma of Alina’s abduction,” Masih added. “The pain of losing our child and the thoughts of her suffering in captivity keep both of us awake all night. May God have mercy on us and save our child!”

The Islamabad-based Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry intervened at the family’s request and is pressuring the police to find and rescue Alina. “The FIR was registered on our intervention after nearly 26 hours of the incident,” Safdar Chaudhry, chairman of the ministry, told MSN. “Had the police acted on time, the accused could have been arrested, but inaction allowed him to disappear.”

An Islamic-majority country where such forced marriages have been backed by the judicial system, Pakistan ranks 7 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.

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