Christian father shot dead by Muslims in Pakistan after trying to rescue 14-Y-O daughter from forced Islamic marriage

Pakistani Muslims abducted and forced a teenage Christian girl to marry the man she worked for as house servant and then shot dead her father who tried to rescue her.

Mehwish, a 14-year-old Christian girl who worked as part-time domestic servant to 20-year-old Zahid Iqbal, an Islamic man at Shadab Colony in Faisalabad, did not return home after Iqbal's family asked her to work the whole day on March 12. Days after, her family received a letter with a copy of their daughter's marriage certificate to Iqbal.

According to a report by the British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA), Christian minorities in the country suffer continued persecution in the forms of violent assaults, kidnapping, forced marriages, forced conversion to Islam and charges of blasphemy.

Christian girls as young as 12 years old face the threat of abduction and forced marriage and subsequently a domestic life of sexual and domestic abuse and even forced prostitution and human trafficking.

Mehwish's father, 42-year-old rickshaw driver Tanveer Masih, sold their house in the Faisalabad slum of Khalid Colony to fight for his daughter's legal freedom.

Iqbal's 35-year-old cousin, Ayub, then arranged a meeting with Masih on May 31 and asked Masih to bring the legal papers as he promised to return Mehwish if he dropped the charges. On his way to meet Ayub, two gunmen shot Masih and stole the legal papers.

"The police have not done anything substantial to help my daughter, we now have no money to defend our rights and without my husband we have no voice," Najma Bibi, Masih's wife, told BPCA. "We live in a hopeless situation, we need help. I pray that my daughter will continue to place her hope in Jesus Christ."

Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of BPCA, said the impoverished family did everything they could within their means to attain justice but the loss of their home and family patriarch meant the cost was "extremely heavy."

"I understand why so many choose to do nothing bearing the pain to save what is left of their families," said Chowdhry.

"Now they need our support. I hope Christians across the world choose to remember this family in their prayers as they continue to fight the good fight," he added.

BPCA aims to raise £4000 to resettle the bereaved family and assist with their immediate needs.