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CV NEWS FEED // Police in Pakistan have arrested Shakeel Masih, the father of an abducted Christian girl, after he sought justice against her captors.
According to EU Today, Masih has been fighting for months to prosecute Muazzam Mazhar, the 28-year-old Muslim man who kidnapped Masih’s 13-year-old daughter, Roshni Shakeel, on March 13. Mazhar later became her “husband” through a forced, illegal marriage.
Instead, the police filed charges against Masih on October 20 for welcoming his daughter home after she ran away from her captors in May.
EU Today reported, “The Multan District and Sessions Court Judicial Magistrate, Farooq Latif, has issued a three-day physical remand for Shakeel Maish, Roshni’s father, placing him under police custody and enabling continued physical and mental abuse.”
International Christian Response Canada reports that Masih said his daughter had repeatedly spurned Mazhar’s advances before she was kidnapped.
Mazhar’s father, Mazhar Abbas, who lives in Saudi Arabia, contacted Masih and demanded that he give his 13-year-old daughter to the 28-year-old, unemployed Mazhar.
“You have a beautiful daughter, and it would be better for you to give her to my son yourself — there’s nothing you ‘Chuhras’ [slur for Christian] can do to stop us from taking her,” Abbas told Masih.
Masih said that he refused the arrangement and stopped taking calls from Abbas, which “offended him to the extent that he encouraged his son to abduct Roshni and forcibly marry her,” he said.
Two days after Masih’s daughter was abducted, a local Muslim named Bilal Hatim told him to give up hope of regaining his daughter.
“On March 15, Bilal Hatim told me that he had information that Roshni had converted and married Mazhar of her own will,” Masih said.
The distraught father continued:
He said that instead of wasting money to find her, I should consider reaching a settlement with the accused’s family to protect my honor. I turned down his offer, saying that I wanted my daughter back at all costs even if it meant putting my honor at stake. Roshni’s just a child, and I love her with all my heart. How can I forsake my own flesh and blood?
On March 18, Masih filed a petition in the Multan Bench of the Lahore High Court and expressed concern that Shakeel would be killed. The court informed him that Shakeel had already appeared at court and said that she willingly consented to the marriage. Masih suspected that she had done so under severe coercion.
He added that the court documents listed her as 18 instead of 13.
He also was highly suspicious of his daughter’s conversion to Islam. She had dropped out of school after seventh grade because she did not feel comfortable with the Islamic education, where she had to recite verses from the Quran.
“Despite my meager resources, I was determined to educate my children and told her that she should continue her studies at home,” Masih said. “I will never believe that a girl who did not like quranic studies has suddenly grown so interested in that faith that she converted. Her conversion and marriage are just a cover for sexual abuse.”
Shakeel told The Friday Times, “I feel so lucky that I managed to escape, and finally I am with my parents and siblings. I also tried to escape a month ago, but I couldn’t succeed, and they badly tortured me for the attempt.” She had been tortured when she was first kidnapped as well.
She stated that she ran away from her captors when she heard Mazhar talking about selling her in a phone conversation. Shakeel also confirmed that she only said she agreed to marry Mazhar because her captors threatened to kill her parents if she did not comply.
