Although she is not yet 18, after one year and three months in a shelter home she had been sent back to the man who abducted her.
by Marco Respinti
Remember Chanda Maharaj, also known as Chanda Kumari? “Bitter Winter” kind of adopted this young Hindu girl, one of the hundreds of victims of abduction, forced conversion to Islam, and equally forced marriage to their Sunni Muslim kidnappers.
We are proud of having played a role in alerting the international community to her case, which for once resulted in the Pakistani authorities doing something rather than simply sitting idle and taking at face value videos or statements signed by the victims obviously under duress claiming they converted and married freely.
Chanda was a 15-year-old Hindu girl when she was kidnapped on August 12, 2022, in the Fateh Chowk area of Hyderabad, Sindh, Pakistan while she was walking home with her sister. Her kidnapper was Shaman Magsi, a Sunni Muslim man who had repeatedly tried to approach her.
Initially, the police refused to take action on the complaint filed by her parents. Finally, after the international campaign supporting her, in October 2022 Chanda was rescued by police from her “husband” and taken to a shelter home. However, on October 20 a court ruled that her conversion and “marriage” were valid and sent her back to her kidnapper Shaman Magsi. The parents appealed, and in December 2022 Chandra was taken again to the shelter home, although she had clearly expressed to the court her wish to be with her family.
We are aware that there have been some cases in Pakistan where young girls from religious minorities really ran away with Muslim boyfriends. These were not cases of kidnapping but of freely chosen marriages the non-Muslim parents opposed, incorrectly presenting them as “abductions.” But that there is a small number of cases falsely presented as “abductions” does not change the fact that in many other cases the abductions are all too real. As for Chanda Maharaj there are videos taken in the court where she runs to her parents and cries desperately, telling the judges she wants to be with them.
The legal issue also concerns the age of the abducted girls. In 2019, a Pakistani law raised the age for marriage to 18. If a girl is not yet 18, she cannot legally marry, voluntarily or otherwise. The new law has not stopped the kidnappings, though. Abductors claim that recording births is not an exact science in Pakistan and birth certificates are often incorrect. They insist that rather than on birth certificates courts should rely on medical examinations determining the “biological age.” In December 2022, court-appointed medical examiners determined that Chanda had a biological age of 16, while her birth certificate stated that she was born on October 11, 2007, and was thus 15.
Now, the court has determined that Chanda’s biological age makes her apt to be with her “husband,” although the birth certificate says she is not yet 17, and she has been taken back to him from the shelter home. There has been no hearing, she has not been heard, and her parents have learned about her fate after she had already been taken to the home of her kidnapper.
Governments come and go in Pakistan, but nobody takes serious action to halt the scandal of abductions and forced conversions and marriages of young girls from minority religions.
