Pakistani court orders release of Christian girl tortured by Muslim kidnapper
The Christian Post reports that a court in eastern Pakistan’s Punjab province has finally ordered the release of a thirteen-year-old Christian girl who was abducted, forced to marry one of her kidnappers, tortured and chained up in a cattle pen for up to five months. A session court in Faisalabad city on Tuesday allowed Farah Shaheen, who had been living in a shelter house as per earlier court order, to rejoin her family.
The court order comes weeks after police dropped charges against Khizar Hayat, a forty-five-year-old Muslim man, and his two associates after Farah, who was abducted by them from Faisalabad last June, testified she willingly married Hayat, The U.K. Times reported at the time, adding that police ignored her parents’ complaint that she had been abducted and tortured.
“She wants to live with her father. Since the marriage between Farah Shaheen and Khizar Hayat has not been registered and nikah (marriage contract) has not been verified by the Union Council concerned, she cannot be kept in a shelter house for an indefinite period,” Judge Rana Masood Akhtar was quoted as saying.
“The petitioner, father of Mst. Farah Shaheen, also has given an undertaking that he and his family members shall properly take care of Mst. Farah Shaheen and that they will not allow anybody else to cause any harm to her life and liberty,” the judge added.
A 2014 study by The Movement for Solidarity and Peace Pakistan estimated that about one thousand women and girls from Pakistan’s Hindu and Christian community were abducted, forcibly married to their captor, and forcibly converted to Islam every year.
Source and image: christianpost.com
