Police in Pakistan have declined to rescue a 15-year-old Christian girl, Sidra Bibi, who was kidnapped at gunpoint, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to the abductor, as reported by her father, Afzal Javed Masih. The incident took place in Chak No. 648-GB village in Jaranwala city of Punjab province when the girl was abducted from her home by a man named Ali Murtaza and two others on March 27. Masih, a scrap collector in Sialkot, immediately filed a report upon learning about the abduction, hoping for his daughter’s safe return.
Masih expressed his disappointment with the police’s handling of the case, noting that they inaccurately recorded Sidra Bibi’s age as 17 instead of 15, as per her official birth certificate. Despite initially arresting the suspect’s relatives, the police later released them upon purported documents claiming that Sidra had willingly converted to Islam and married Murtaza Ali. Masih disputed the authenticity of these documents, emphasizing that his daughter, who has never attended school, could not have made such decisions independently.
The distraught father criticized the lack of meaningful action by the police, alleging that they failed to prevent the incident by not acting promptly. He highlighted the precarious situation of his Christian family, the only one in the village, raising concerns about their vulnerability as a minority. Meanwhile, senior Christian lawyer Lazar Allah Rakha criticized the police for not invoking the Punjab Child Marriage Restraint Ordinance 2026, emphasizing that regardless of age discrepancies, the law prohibits marriage under 18. Rakha also pointed out irregularities in the Islamic marriage certificate, including the absence of Sidra’s national identity card number, as required by law.
