Refusing to review evidence from a Christian couple trying to recover their 12-year-old daughter after she was allegedly kidnapped and forced to convert and marry, a judge in Pakistan last week denied them custody, sources said. The Religion of Peace <-Source Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan of the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi Bench on Thursday (Aug. 18) denied the petition by Parvez Masih and his wife, Yasmeen, seeking custody of their daughter Zarvia, said rights activist Sherkan Malik.
“The judge dismissed our petition in under two minutes – he even refused to look at any of the evidence, which clearly showed that the minor child was threatened to give a statement in favor of the accused, Imran Shahzad and his wife Adiba,” Malik told Morning Star News.
The judge, declaring “The girl is 12, she is married, and she did it out of her free will,” made the ruling in spite of recorded evidence that Shahzad had threatened to kill Zarvia’s two brothers if she told the truth, Malik said. The ruling leaves Zarvia in the custody of Shahzad and his wife.
Malik, a Muslim, said that Masih and his wife, who live in Rawalpindi, approached him for legal assistance over fears that their daughter had been killed after being kidnapped.
“Since May 14, when a judicial magistrate in Rawalpindi handed Zarvia’s custody to Imran on the basis of the child’s verbal statement that she was 14 years old and had married the accused of her own free will, her parents have had no contact with her, leaving them to question if she is even alive,” Malik said. “The judge told us that since the girl had already recorded her statement, this was now just a frivolous case, and there was nothing more the court could do in this regard.”
Malik said that in July, Zarvia managed to make a phone call to her brother, telling him that Shahzad, 40, had threatened to kill him and her other brother if she incriminated Shahzad in the abduction case.
“The family has an audio recording of Zarvia’s phone call to her eldest brother,” Malik told Morning Star News.
Based on this information, Masih filed a petition for the recovery of his daughter in the Rawalpindi additional sessions court on July 13, but the judge dismissed the case on July 14. Basis of Kidnapping CaseMasih said his family had given refuge to Shahzad, his wife Adiba and their three children in their house because Shahzad was jobless and did not have a home.
He said that Shahzad physically abused his own wife and children, and so Masih asked the family to leave their house after some weeks.
On April 30, a week after Shahzad and his family vacated their house, Adiba came to their home and lured Zarvia into going with her to the market without informing her family, Masih said.
When their daughter did not return home at dusk, Masih and his wife started searching for her and contacted relatives of the Muslim couple. Masih said he received a WhatsApp voice message from Shahzad that night telling him that Zarvia was in his custody, and that they should not contact his relatives again.
The family then registered a kidnapping case against the couple with the Sadiqabad Police Station in Rawalpindi on May 1. The police recovered Zarvia from a brick kiln in Faisalabad 13 days later and also arrested three persons, including the Muslim couple and an accomplice identified only as Liaquat, Malik said.
“Despite being a minor, Zarvia was not sent to a children’s shelter home for the night but was instead kept in the women’s police station in Rawalpindi in the same cell as Adiba,” Malik said.
Zarvia recorded her statement before a judicial magistrate on May 14, claiming that she was 14 years old and did not want to undergo a medical examination, he said.
“She also said that she had converted to Islam and contracted marriage with Imran Shahzad with her free will,” Malik said, adding that on the basis of her statement, the judge dismissed the kidnapping case and ordered the release of all three suspects. The judge roundly rejected the girl’s birth certificate and other documents proving she was under the age to legally marry.
“The sessions court completely ignored her birth certificate, church registration documents and school certifications which confirmed her age as 12,” he said, adding that her coerced statement that she was 14 was immaterial because the legal age to marry under the Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Act is 16.
“Police and judiciary tend to support those who commit crimes such as forced conversions, child marriages and sexual violence because they believe they will receive a heavenly reward for helping convert someone to Islam, regardless of how intentional or coercive the conversion is,” Malik said.
[...]
Church leaders and rights activists cite forced conversion as the biggest challenge for vulnerable minority communities of Pakistan.
“Zarvia’s case is yet another example of how minor children are being subjected to sexual violence in the guise of Islamic marriage,” Marshall said.
At least 1,000 women from religious minorities, including Christians and Hindus, are forcibly converted and married annually in Pakistan, according to various rights groups. Although Pakistan officials have dismissed such reports as “rubbish and baseless,” activists assert actual numbers could be much higher as many cases go unreported. |
