"Another a 14-year-old Christian girl named Chashman daughter of Gulzar Masih, a resident of Nadir Shah Town Samundari Road", has been sexually assaulted and Forcibly married to the abductor
Chashman Kanwal, who was 13 in the summer and is turning 14 according to her family. Her father, Gulzar Masih, is a poor Christian rickshaw driver. In July, he went to the police claiming that Chashman was abducted after he dropped her in front of her school, Government Secondary High School Samanabad, in Faisalabad.
Later, he received a video showing his daughter’s conversion to Islam and marriage to one Muhammad Usman, accompanied by a letter coming from Pakistan Sunni Tehreek, a conservative Islamic group affiliated with the Barelvi movement.
Chashman now goes under the name of Ayesha Bibi, and her marriage certificate claims she is 19. Her father filed school documents and a birth certificate confirming she was 13 at the time of the abduction. However, on September 24 the Court of Lahore validated her marriage and conversion, claiming that her and her husband’s statements that she is 19 prevail upon other evidence.
According to a 2014 study by The Movement for Solidarity and Peace Pakistan, an estimated 1,000 women and girls from Pakistan’s Hindu and Christian community are abducted, forcefully married to their captor, and forcibly converted to Islam every year. The issue of religion is often injected into cases of sexual assault to place religious minority victims at a disadvantage. Playing upon religious biases, perpetrators know they can cover up and justify their crimes by introducing the element of religion.
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