Neha’s parents and sisters are waiting with hope for her return from forced conversion to Islam.
Neha Faqir, 18, is a Christian woman from Kot Radha Kishan in Punjab province.
On March 24, Neha’s mother accompanied her to her course in a local sewing center. Her family had enrolled her there so that she could gain valuable skills and a measure of economic independence. That evening, she did not return.
After searching for her for six days, her family reported her missing to the police on March 30. The police originally refused to file a missing person’s report, but finally did two days later, after a lawyer supported by CSI intervened on the family’s behalf.
The lawyer filed a petition on behalf of the family, compelling the police to search for Neha. They eventually found her in a madrassa in Lahore called Kafalat Centre al-Hassan. She had been legally converted to Islam on March 26, and taken the Muslim name “Ayesha” – despite never having shown any previous interest in converting.
The family’s lawyer then filed a habeas petition, asking the authorities for a hearing where Neha’s rights could be defended. The hearing was set for June 9.
On the day of the hearing, Neha’s family caught their first glimpse of her in over two months. But the girl they glimpsed was not the Neha they knew. Dressed head to foot in black robes, the 18-year-old was accompanied by a similarly dressed Muslim woman and several religious representatives.
In court, Judge Muhammad Tariq Nadeem stunned the family by dismissing their petition outright. Neha’s parents desperately asked the judge to speak with her alone for ten minutes. The judge refused.
Neha’s case fits a systematic pattern of abduction targeting women and girls from religious minority communities in Muslim-majority Pakistan.
For decades, Christian and Hindu girls in Punjab and Sindh have been abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to Muslim men with the complicity of religious authorities. These abductions are almost never punished.
In April 2024, UN experts expressed serious concern about continued and widespread patterns of abduction and forced religious conversion through marriage affecting women and girls belonging to minority communities in Pakistan.
Nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities are abducted each year in Pakistan, noted a 2021 BBC report, citing local human rights groups. It added that many of them are forced to convert to Islam. It also quoted the National Council of Churches in Pakistan as saying that the number of such abductions was increasing.
At the request of her family, Christian Solidarity International is campaigning for Neha’s freedom. We invite you to join our campaign, by sending an email directly to Pakistan’s Minister of Justice on her behalf.
