LAHORE, Pakistan — A Muslim man in Pakistan who kidnapped and forcibly converted a Christian girl who later escaped has abducted her again, her father said.
Salman Masih said that Arsalan Ali again kidnapped his 15-year-old daughter, Muskan Salman, as the family visited their remote hometown, Tando Ghulam Ali in Badin District, Sindh Province, on Feb. 18 to attend the funeral of a close relative.
Muskan had escaped from Ali on Dec. 15, 2024, and was coerced into a false marriage.
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Masih, a Catholic, said that Muskan was home with her 10-year-old cousin while all other members of the family had gone to the funeral when Ali and an unidentified accomplice broke in and took her away at gunpoint.
“When we returned home, we saw that my niece was crying in the courtyard while Muskan was missing,” Masih told Christian Daily International–Morning Star. “The child told us that she and Muskan were playing when the two men forced their way into the house and took Muskan with them.”
Masih said that he immediately informed police and tried to get an abduction case registered against Ali, but officers refused to register his complaint.
“It’s been over 10 days since Muskan was taken, but the police are not taking any action,” he said. “Ali is also missing, and we have no information about their whereabouts.
“I made a grave mistake by taking Muskan to our hometown for the funeral without consulting our lawyer,” Masih said. “I thought that we would discreetly attend the funeral, commiserate with the bereaved family and return to Karachi the next day without Ali getting any information about our presence there. But I was wrong.”
Ali had been threatening the family and demanding that Muskan be returned to him as his “legally-wedded wife,” according to Masih.
“We are very concerned for our daughter’s safety, and the police’s indifference to our plight is exacerbating our fears that we might not be able to see her again,” he said, appealing to the provincial government and senior police officials to intervene.
Muskan was first abducted from her home on March 11, 2024. The Masih family had filed a First Information Report accusing Ali of kidnapping, but Muskan was coerced into declaring that she was 19 years old and that she had converted to Islam and married Ali of her own free will, her family learned. In Sindh Province, the legal marriage age for both genders is 18.
Ali, estimated to be between 25 and 27 years old, forcibly converted Muskan to Islam and forged a marriage certificate as legal cover for the crime, Masih said. She escaped on Dec. 15 and reunited with her family. A Christian attorney in Karachi, Luke Victor, helped the family flee from their hometown to Karachi, where Muskan was kept in a safe-house to protect her from her captor.
Victor said that in her written statement to the court on Dec. 16, 2024, Muskan had categorically denied that she converted to Islam and denied she willingly married Ali. The court had allowed her to stay with her parents till Badin police investigated the case anew to determine her age and ascertain if it warranted legal action under the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act 2014, he said.
“It’s very unfortunate that the Masih family took Muskan to Tando Ghulam Ali without informing us,” he said. “We put in a lot of effort, legal and otherwise, to save the girl, but now we are back to from where we started.”
Pakistan ranked eighth on Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian, as it was the previous year.
This article was originally published at Christian Daily International–Morning Star News
