Pakistan Court allows Minor Christian Girl who converted to Islam to go with Parents

On Wednesday, a Pakistani Court allowed Arzoo, an underage Christian girl who allegedly converted to Islam and contracted a "free-will marriage", to go home with her parents after she spent a year in a shelter home for women.

The two member bench of the Sindh High Court, headed by Justice Mohammad Karim Khan Agha, had in November 2020 sent Arzoo to a shelter home after it was confirmed by a medical board that she was underage at 14 years.

The court had then ruled that Arzoo, who claimed that she contracted the marriage on her own accord, was a minor and could not enter into a legally valid marriage as her consent had no legal value and directed the police to proceed against her alleged husband for violating the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act 2013.

Arzoo had earlier refused to go home with her parents, who filed a case last year claiming that a Muslim man named Syed Azhar Ali, who is much older than their daughter, first abducted her and then forcibly converted her to Islam and married her.

However, during Wednesday's hearing, the girl said that she wanted to return home with her parents.

The court also stated that the girl would not be allowed to meet Azhar.

The court directed her parents to give an undertaking that they would not pressurise Arzoo to change her religion as she had told the court that she had willingly converted to Islam.

The parents were also ordered to produce her before the area police officer to ensure the girl was being treated well by her parents, in accordance with its order until she turned 18.

In December last year, a judicial magistrate had invoked the offence of rape against Azhar and also found three others guilty of solemnising and facilitating a marriage which was illegal.

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