Judicial Magistrate (South) Abdul Sattar issued these remarks while hearing a kidnapping case filed by an uncle of a 16-year-old girl in January this year, who had stated that his niece had left her home and later called her mother and told her that she had gotten married to a man named Asim.

The girl had denied being kidnapped and claimed that she married of her own free will. She was taken into custody and was shifted to a shelter home after her ossification test declared her to be 15 to 16 years of age.

The case was transferred to a session court for a trial by the judicial magistrate under sections 365-B (kidnapping, abducting or inducting woman to compel for marriage etc), 375-V (rape with or without her consent when she is under sixteen years of age) and 376-III (punishment for rape with a minor or a person with mental or physical disability) of the Pakistan Penal Code read with sections 2, 4 and 5 of the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2013.

The judge maintained that the girl was not of legal age to give consent to marriage, and engaging a child under the guise of marriage in sexual conduct falls within the definition of sexual abuse, The News reported.

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The police said the family of the 13-year-old girl filed a First Information Report, stating the girl was kidnapped over a month ago. The family had named Abdullah as a suspected kidnapper.

Following the registration of the FIR, the police conducted raids in Peshawar and Lahore, Dawn reported.

The police found the minor girl in Lahore, who they say, has married the kidnapper of her own free will.

Last year, a teenage girl from Karachi, Dua Zehra, had gone missing from Karachi and was found in Punjab ‘married’ to her kidnapper.

Karachi Police told the court that 24 people, including Dua’s purported husband Zaheer, were found to be involved in the abduction and child marriage.

According to the United Nations,  Pakistan has the 6th highest number of girls married before the age of 18 in the world. According to UNICEF report from 2018, around 18 per cent of the girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18 giving it the lowest rate of child marriage in South Asia after Sri Lanka.

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