Each year, 1,000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan

Cops escort Arzoo Raja, background centre, out of the HC in Karachi. The Christian girl`s parents reported her missing. Two days later, cops said she was married to their 40-year-old Muslim neighbour and converted to Islam. Pic/AP

Neha loved the hymns that filled her church with music. But she lost the chance to sing them last year when, at the age of 14, she was forcibly converted to Islam and married to a 45-year-old man with children twice her age.

Neha's husband is in jail now facing charges of rape for the underage marriage, but she is in hiding, afraid after security guards confiscated a pistol from his brother in court. "He brought the gun to shoot me."

She is one of nearly 1,000 girls from religious minorities who are forced to convert to Islam in Pakistan each year, largely to pave the way for marriages that are under the legal age and non-consensual. Human rights activists say the practice has accelerated during COVID-19 lockdowns.

The girls generally are kidnapped by complicit acquaintances and relatives or men looking for brides. Sometimes they are taken by powerful landlords as payment for outstanding debts by their farmhand parents, and police often look the other way. Once converted, the girls are quickly married off, often to older men or to their abductors, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Minorities make up just 3.6 per cent of Pakistan's 220 million people. Those who report forced conversions, for example, can be targeted with charges of blasphemy.

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