LAHORE, Pakistan — Five individuals are suspected of kidnapping a 14-year-old Christian, and her family fears she may be forced to convert to Islam and marry one of the captors.
The girl was lured Jan. 9 from her home in Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province, then forced into a van and taken away, her father told Christian Daily International and Morning Star News.
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One suspect is a Muslim man — Muhammad Dildar — whose repeated advances the girl had spurned, said her father, Sharif Masih.
Masih informed police, who arrested two suspects, but not Dildar. Masih said police have done little else to recover his daughter.
Ongoing abuse
Quoting rights advocates, the Jan. 21 article of the two news outlets states, “Typically, kidnapped girls in Pakistan — some as young as 10 — are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of Islamic ‘marriages’ and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers. … Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their ‘legal wives.'”
Pakistan is No. 8 on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of places most difficult to be a Christian.
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