13-year-old forced to marry her kidnapper and convert to Islam

Threatened with death, one Christian minor was forced to marry her kidnapper and convert toIslamdespite her family's attempts to get her back.

Shahid Gill, the Christian father, said it was a Pakistani court that handed over his 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old Muslim.

In May of this year, Saddam Hayat, along with 6 other people, kidnapped the little Nayab.

According to what he learned, Shahid Gill is a Catholic and works as a tailor, while his daughter, who was in the seventh grade, worked as an assistant in a beauty salon owned by Saddam Hayat.

In fact, due to the closure of the schools due to the pandemic, Hayat had offered to train the child to learn a trade and be able to help the family's finances.

“Hayat told me that instead of wasting time, Nayab should learn to be a hairdresser to support her family financially. He even offered to pick her up and drop her off after work, making sure we treat her like a daughter, ”Shahid Gill told Morning Star News.

Hayat also promised to give Nayab a salary of 10.000 rupees a month, about 53 euros. However, after a few months, he stopped keeping his word.

On the morning of May 20, the child disappeared and Shahid Gill and his wife Samreen went to the daughter's boss's case to hear from her but she was not there. Then, the Muslim contacted the family, claiming he did not know where the 13-year-old was.

“He offered to help us find her and even accompanied us to various places to look for her,” said the father.

Samreen then went to the police station to report her daughter's disappearance, although accompanied by Hayat, who "advised" her not to say that Nayab worked in her salon.

"My wife unwittingly trusted him and did what he told her," said the father.

Days later, police authorities informed the family that Nayab had been in a women's shelter since May 21, after submitting a request to a court, claiming she was 19 and had voluntarily converted to Islam.

However, her marriage certificate was suspiciously presented on May 20, the day before. The judge, however, ignored the evidence presented by the child's father.

Although on May 26, her parents went to visit the girl, who had expressed a desire to return home, the next day Nayab told the court that she was a 19-year-old woman and that she had converted to Islam on her own.

The judge, for his part, rejected the parental documents that were used to verify the real age of the daughter, as well as other important articles, based only on Nayab's statement, clearly made under threat.

“The judge accepted Nayab's request to leave the shelter and stay with Hayat's family. And there was nothing we could do to stop it, ”the father complained.

"My mother passed out in court as soon as the judge read the sentence and while we were taking care of her, the police took Nayab away in silence."

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