A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is demanding Pakistan's government intervene in the case of an 18-year-old Christian woman whose family says she was kidnapped and coerced into converting to Islam, a case that has drawn international attention to a pattern of abuse against religious minorities.

Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, led ten fellow members of Congress in an August 20 letter to Pakistan's Minister for Law and Justice, Azam Nazeer Tarar, urging immediate steps to safeguard Neha Faqir. The young woman disappeared on March 24 after leaving her family's home in Kot Radha Kishan, a town in Punjab's Kasur District, to attend a sewing course. She never arrived. Days later, her family learned she had been taken to an Islamic seminary in Lahore, where she had allegedly been forced to renounce her Christian faith.

Five months on, Faqir has not been returned to her family. A Pakistani court dismissed her relatives' legal petition. And the lawmakers who signed the letter say the circumstances of her disappearance and court appearance raise grave doubts about whether she has been free to speak for herself at any point since she vanished.

Faqir vanished on her way to a sewing class and surfaced at an Islamic seminary

Faqir's parents had enrolled her at a local sewing center roughly two months before she disappeared. The center was operated by an Islamic cleric named Muhammad Sajid and his two wives. On March 24, Faqir left home for the center but never showed up. When her family inquired, they were told she had not attended that day.

An attorney working with Christian Solidarity International, the advocacy group supporting the family, traced Faqir to an Islamic seminary in Lahore. The family says she was forced to convert to Islam within days of her disappearance. On April 1, police registered a formal complaint naming Sajid and his two wives in connection with the case.

What followed was a months-long effort to get Faqir before a judge. On May 6, the Lahore High Court directed the District Police Officer in Kasur to locate her and file a progress report. Police eventually reported that Faqir had been found at a government shelter in Lahore, but because the shelter fell under Lahore's jurisdiction rather than Kasur's, bureaucratic delays slowed efforts to bring her to court.

CSI's lawyer filed a fresh habeas corpus petition, a legal demand that authorities produce a detained person before a judge, on behalf of Faqir's father, Faqir Masih. The court ordered police to bring the young woman to a hearing on June 9.

At her only court appearance, Faqir wore Islamic clothing and her family could not speak to her

June 9 was the first time the family had seen Faqir in more than two months. She appeared in the Lahore High Court wearing Islamic clothing, accompanied by a Muslim woman and several Islamic representatives. Her family members were not permitted to speak with her before or during the proceedings.

The court dismissed the family's petition that same day. The basis for the dismissal is not clear from available reporting. No arrests connected to the April 1 police complaint have been reported.

The congressional letter, as reported by the Christian Post, directly challenged the legitimacy of those proceedings. The lawmakers wrote that the circumstances of Faqir's court appearance:

"have raised serious questions about the cause of her disappearance and whether she was able to communicate her wishes independently."

They added a pointed concern about the family's exclusion from the process:

"We are particularly concerned by reports that her family was not permitted to speak with her before or during those proceedings."

The case carries echoes of other cases in which Pakistani courts have blocked Christian families from reaching daughters after alleged forced conversions, a recurring pattern that advocacy groups say Pakistani institutions have done little to address.

Lawmakers demanded four specific protections for Faqir

Smith's letter carried the signatures of nine Republicans and two Democrats, Reps. James P. McGovern of Massachusetts and Brad Sherman of California. The other Republican co-signers were Reps. French Hill of Arkansas, Gus Bilirakis of Florida, Andy Harris of Maryland, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, Riley Moore of West Virginia, Randy Weber of Texas, Michael Cloud of Texas, and Blake Moore of Utah.

The bipartisan group laid out four demands. They urged Tarar to ensure Faqir's physical safety and well-being, to provide her confidential access to independent legal counsel, to allow her to communicate freely and privately with her family, and to guarantee that any further judicial proceedings take place under conditions enabling her to express her wishes "freely and without intimidation or undue influence."

Joel Veldkamp, CSI's director for public advocacy, framed the letter as a test for Pakistan's government:

"We are grateful to these members of Congress for taking this stand for Neha and for all persecuted Christians in Pakistan. This is an opportunity for the government of Pakistan to end the impunity that fuels violence and extremism in their country, and show that attacks on Christians and other religious minorities will not be overlooked. It is time to bring Neha home."

A July report documented 210 cases of abduction and forced conversion since 2019

Faqir's case does not exist in isolation. On July 14, the Jubilee Campaign, an advocacy organization, presented a report titled "Stolen Girls" at the European Parliament. The report documented 210 cases between 2019 and 2025 involving alleged abduction, forced religious conversion, child marriage, and sexual violence against Christian and other minority girls in Pakistan.

The numbers are stark. More than 83 percent of the documented victims were under 18. The average age of victims was 12.8 years. The average age of alleged perpetrators was 35.8 years. In several cases, the age gap between victim and perpetrator exceeded 30 years. Of the 210 cases, 134 victims were between 14 and 17 years old, and 41 were younger than 14.

Punjab Province, where Faqir's family lives, accounted for 186 of the 210 documented cases, nearly 89 percent. Sindh Province recorded 22 cases, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province recorded two. The report concluded that the cases "reflected a broader pattern of abuse facilitated by fraudulent documentation, manipulation of legal processes and institutional failures."

Persecution of Christians in Pakistan is not limited to abductions. Open Doors, which tracks religious persecution worldwide, ranked Pakistan eighth among 50 countries on its 2026 World Watch List for the severity of anti-Christian hostility. The group cited systemic discrimination, mob violence, forced conversions, bonded labor, and gender-based abuses, and found that weak law enforcement and widespread impunity have allowed perpetrators to escape accountability.

The global scope of violence against Christian communities has prompted responses far beyond Pakistan's borders. In Nigeria, a million-woman prayer movement has mobilized after thousands of Christians were killed by Islamic militants, a reminder that the threats facing believers in the developing world are not confined to a single country or continent.

British lawmakers have also intervened, but Pakistan has not responded publicly

The U.S. congressional letter is not the only international pressure on Islamabad. On June 16, CSI presented Faqir's case at a meeting convened by British Parliamentarian David Alton at the House of Lords in London. Alton subsequently wrote to Hamish Falconer, the U.K. minister responsible for the Middle East and Pakistan, asking him to intervene.

Neither the Pakistani government nor the U.K. government has publicly responded to these appeals. Whether Muhammad Sajid or the sewing center operators were ever arrested or charged following the April 1 police complaint remains unclear. Faqir's current location and status are unknown.

The family has also alleged that they faced intimidation and pressure to withdraw their complaint, though the specific nature of those threats and who made them are not detailed in available reporting. The police, for their part, have been accused of failing to act with urgency, a charge that fits the broader pattern described in the Jubilee Campaign report, where institutional failures and manipulation of legal processes enabled abuse to continue unchecked.

Advocates working on cases like Faqir's operate in environments where even international intervention has struggled to stop rising attacks on Christians. The question is whether diplomatic letters from Washington and London will carry more weight than the habeas corpus petitions that a Pakistani court has already dismissed.

And across the world, from Pakistan to Nigeria to Europe, Christian families continue to fight systems that separate them from their children, sometimes by force, sometimes by bureaucratic indifference, and sometimes by both at once.

Eleven members of Congress put their names on a letter. Now the question is whether anyone in Islamabad will bother to read it, or whether Neha Faqir will simply become case number 211.