One day after Chanda Maharaj was rescued by the police, a Pakistani court ruled she should go back to her Muslim “husband.”
by Marco Respinti
There can be no good news in the fight against forced conversion and forced marriage of girls from religious minorities in Pakistan.
Yesterday, Bitter Winter reported that the police—after an international mobilization on social media that caught the attention of some local politicians and judges—had rescued Chanda Maharaj, a 15-year-old Hindu girl abducted on August 12 in the Fateh Chowk area of Hyderabad, Sindh, for the purpose of being forcibly converted to Islam and married to a Muslim man. The girl met her parents and was taken to a safe house.
We commented that at least one of dozens of abduction stories was ending well in Pakistan. Alas, it was not to be.
This was yesterday. Today a Pakistani court ruled that the conversion and the marriage were valid (which is against Pakistani law, which in 2019 raised the minimum age for marrying to 18), and ordered the girl returned to her so-called husband.
The reaction of the girl, who attended the hearing with her mother and cried desperately when the verdict was announced, tells the truth of the story. No further comments are needed, except that the fight against the abuse of minor girls through forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan should continue, in all international fora.
Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), author, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
