A Christian father in Pakistan's Punjab Province says his 16-year-old daughter was taken from the family home, converted to Islam, and married off online to a Muslim man living in Dubai, and that police did nothing meaningful to bring her back.

Liaqat Masih, a member of the Anglican Church of Pakistan and father of seven, told Christian Daily International, Morning Star News that his daughter Jia Liaqat disappeared on April 3 from the family's village of Chak No. 505/WB in Burewala Tehsil, Vehari District. He and his wife had been away working in a Muslim landowner's fields at the time.

The family filed a First Information Report with the Burewala Police Station the same day. What followed, by Masih's account, was a weeks-long ordeal of evasion, intimidation, and bureaucratic failure, the kind of story that has become grimly familiar for Pakistan's Christian minority.

A WhatsApp call and a warning

Five days after Jia vanished, on April 8, the family received a WhatsApp call from a man identifying himself as Sohail Riaz. Masih said the caller claimed Jia was in his custody and warned the family against pursuing the case.

Masih shared the phone number with police. Their response, he said, was hollow.

"We immediately filed a First Information Report (FIR) regarding Jia's abduction with the Burewala Police Station the same day, but the police did not make any effort to trace her whereabouts."

By April 15, police informed the family that Jia had converted to Islam and entered into an online Nikah, an Islamic marriage contract, with Riaz. The marriage was reportedly registered with Union Council No. 65 in Gunniyan, Kamoke Tehsil, Punjab Province. Riaz, the family later learned, was based in Dubai.

Masih said Riaz had contacted Jia through social media and groomed her for sexual exploitation under the guise of marriage, directing his sister and brother-in-law to carry out the abduction on the ground.

"While the police made no serious effort to recover my daughter, we later found out that Riaz was based in Dubai, and that Jia had allegedly been taken by his sister and brother-in-law on his direction."

Police runaround and released suspects

Frustrated by the lack of progress, the family filed a complaint with the regional police chief, alleging inaction despite official documents showing Jia was a minor. That complaint, Masih said, only made things worse.

"Ostensibly angered by our complaint, the local police became more aggressive and rude toward us."

Then came what Masih described as a deliberate runaround. Police told him suspects had been traced to Gujrat and that he should come join a raid. He traveled there and waited for hours. His calls went unanswered. That evening, officers told him to go instead to Gujranwala, where they said two suspects had been arrested, though they would not say who.

The pattern of institutional failure facing Christian minorities in South Asia extends well beyond Pakistan. In India, courts have had to intervene to halt the forced exhumation of Christian dead in Chhattisgarh amid broader demands for protections.

On May 4, the family learned that Jia had appeared before a magistrate. She stated she was an adult who had converted to Islam and married Riaz of her own free will. After that statement, police released the two suspects they had taken into custody.

Masih was left with nothing.

"My daughter is a minor and cannot legally marry, but neither the police nor the court felt the need to verify her age. Every day we worry about what will happen to her if we cannot rescue her from the custody of her abductors."

Rights activist calls magistrate proceedings into question

Albert Patras, a rights activist assisting the family, said the purported conversion and marriage appeared legally questionable. He noted that Punjab recently raised the legal age of marriage for both boys and girls to 18 and introduced stricter penalties for child marriage.

"We believe the girl's statement was recorded under duress and in the absence of her family and legal counsel."

Patras said the magistrate should have verified Jia's age through official documentation rather than relying on her verbal claim. The family plans to challenge the magistrate's proceedings in the high court.

"The government must also investigate the family's allegations regarding police conduct, including failure to take effective steps for the recovery of the minor, intimidation of the complainant and attempts to undermine the FIR on the basis of the alleged conversion."

His final assessment was blunt: "The law will remain ineffective unless police and courts enforce it in letter and spirit."

The targeting of vulnerable Christians is not confined to South Asia. In Nigeria, Fulani gunmen have raided Christian villages in Plateau State, leaving dozens dead in attacks that have drawn international condemnation.

A court that questions its own records

Jia's case unfolds against a legal backdrop that offers little comfort to Pakistani Christians. On May 6, Pakistan's Federal Constitutional Court questioned the reliability of records issued by the National Database and Registration Authority during proceedings involving a separate case, a 15-year-old Christian girl allegedly forced to convert to Islam. One judge remarked that NADRA records could not automatically be treated as conclusive proof of age because such documents could potentially be manipulated.

That skepticism has precedent. In a Feb. 3 ruling, the same court upheld the marriage of Maria Shahbaz, a 13-year-old Christian girl, to a 30-year-old Muslim man. In its detailed judgment issued March 25, the court questioned the reliability of both NADRA and union council records, citing inconsistencies in documentation and testimony related to the girl's age.

The Shahbaz case drew international attention. When a country's highest constitutional court casts doubt on its own government's identity records, and then uses that doubt to uphold a child marriage, the system is not merely failing. It is structured to fail.

The pattern of abduction, forced conversion, and sham marriage targeting Christian girls in Pakistan is well documented. The New York Post reported on the 2020 case of Arzoo Raja, a 13-year-old Christian girl abducted in Karachi by a 44-year-old Muslim man named Ali Azhar, who had her converted to Islam and married. Authorities initially accepted claims that she was 18 and had married willingly, though her family said the marriage certificate and conversion documents were fake. Only after protests from church leaders and rights groups did the Sindh High Court order her recovery. She was placed in protective custody and the alleged abductor was arrested.

In that case, local Archbishop Joseph Arshad said, "It is the responsibility of the state to... protect its citizens, especially minor girls." Father Saleh Diego told the Catholic News Agency: "A 13-year-old cannot decide about her religion. She is an innocent girl... [she] still has a lot to learn about her own religion."

Elsewhere in the world, state-backed hostility toward Christians takes different forms but shares the same contempt for religious liberty. In Nicaragua, the Ortega regime has branded priests "servants of Satan" as persecution of the Church intensifies under government direction.

Eighth on the persecution list

Open Doors' 2026 World Watch List ranked Pakistan eighth among 50 countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. The ranking reflects not just mob violence or social hostility but the institutional machinery, police stations that ignore complaints, magistrates who accept a child's coerced statement at face value, courts that undermine their own records when it suits the outcome.

Masih put it plainly:

"There's no justice for the poor in our country, especially for those belonging to minority communities."

The family now fears the FIR may be discharged entirely. Jia remains out of her family's reach. The man who claims to be her husband sits in Dubai. The suspects who allegedly carried out the abduction walk free.

And across Nigeria, militants have killed Christians during Easter worship services, a reminder that the global assault on Christian communities proceeds with little resistance from the institutions that claim to uphold the rights of all.

When the law exists on paper but police refuse to enforce it, when courts take a child's coerced word over government documents, and when the entire system shrugs, the law is not broken. It was never meant to protect people like the Masih family in the first place.