Christian parents in Pakistan denied custody of kidnapped girl

Pakistan’s Lahore High Court has dismissed a petition filed by a Christian couple seeking the recovery of their 12-year-old daughter after she was allegedly kidnapped and forced to convert and marry, media reports said, citing sources. According to Pakistan’s local media portal Kross Konnection, citing rights activist Sherkan Malik, Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan of the court’s Rawalpindi Bench on August 18 refused to review the evidence provided by Parvez Masih and his wife, Yasmeen, seeking custody of their daughter Zarvia. While speaking with the media portal, Malik said 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 favour of the accused, Imran Shahzad and his wife Adiba.

Even in the presence of recorded evidence, the judge, in a ruling, declared that “the girl is 12, she is married, and she did it out of her free will.” According to the activist, the accused Shahzad threatened to kill the girl Zarvia’s two brothers if she told the truth. With this ruling, the girl Zarvia now remains in the custody of Imran Shahzad. Malik said that the father of the girl, 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 him in the abduction case. “The family has an audio recording of Zarvia’s phone call to her eldest brother,” Malik said. 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.