Claim: A video on social media shows a 9-year-old Hindu girl, Reshma, who was forcibly abducted and taken to a Sufi shrine, where she was converted to Islam and married to a 45-year-old Muslim man from Jacobabad named Wazir Hussain.
Fact: The claim is false as the video is from 2019 and shows a girl who was saved from child marriage by the Sindh police in Kandhkot, Kashmore. The girl’s family reportedly sold her off for PKR 25,000 to marry an old man.
On 23 April 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video with the caption, “Pakistan: Reshma, a 9-year-old Hindu girl in Sindh, was forcibly abducted, taken to a Sufi Dargah, converted, and married to 45-year-old Wazir Hussain. According to Pakistan’s court and laws, this marriage is validated, stating she is 19 years old and accepted Islam willingly. Reshma’s new name is Basheeran, and she’s not allowed to return to her Hindu parents.”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search on the video’s keyframes to investigate the claim. The results led to a news story published by Pakistan Point on 4 May 2019, which carries an image of the young girl as seen in the video. The article’s headline reads, “Child Marriage: Police Save 10-year-old Bride In Sukkur”.
The news article describes the girl in the image as a “child bride” who was saved by the Sindh police in the Kashmore area from being married to a 40-year-old man. The girl’s grandmother allegedly sold her for PKR 25,000. Quoting the then Sukkur Additional Inspector General of Police, Dr Jamil Ahmed, the article detailed that the Kashmore police stopped the wedding in time and arrested the groom after registering a case against him.
To corroborate this further, the same news report included a post on X (formerly Twitter) by IGP Dr Jamil Ahmed from 3 May 2019. The post includes two images of the same young girl and describes the incident in question as the case of a“Child Marriage Function” which was registered immediately. The police stopped the event, arresting the culprit and returning the girl to her home “in less than 24 hours”, the IGP’s post confirmed.
Journalist Naila Hayat tweeted about the same incident in 2019, sharing similar images of a “10-year-old bride” from Kashmore that match the viral video’s keyframes. According to another tweet about the case by a social activist Ayaz Buriro, the girl allegedly known as Maluka Guddi, was sent to live at Fairy Home Sukkur after being rescued by the police.
The same image of the girl, matching the viral video, was also used in an article on the Child Marriage (Restraint) Bill by the Express Tribune, published on 8 May 2019.
Newslines Magazine in a 2019 article on child marriage titled, “Say No to Cradle Snatchers” featured the same image of the child bride. The image title reads, “Portrait of grief: Soomar Soomro, 40, married 10-year-old Malookan after paying her father a hefty sum of Rs. 250,000. The police recovered her in a raid in Naparkot, Shikarpur”.
In another video of the same man, he can be seen inside the premises of a police station wearing handcuffs. The young girl can be seen crying standing next to the groom’s mother. The woman speaks in Sindhi and the translated transcript of her statement is as follows:
Groom’s mother: “Shut up and do not cry or the police will scold you… Her parents willingly gave her hand in marriage.”
Journalist: But she is ten years old and your son is 40 years old?
Groom’s mother: “She’s not 10 but what does it matter? Her parents gave her away willingly.”
Journalist: Are the parents alive?
Groom’s mother: “The father is, but the mother is dead.”
From this clip, it is clear that the man in the image was arrested by the police and brought to jail after this young girl was sold to this man by her parents.
While the news articles and X posts quoted above mention that the underage girl was forcibly sold into a marriage with a much older man, they do not claim that she was Hindu or that she was forcibly converted to Islam.
Lastly, Soch Fact Check also contacted a local reporter from Sukkur, Sahrish Kokhar, who confirmed that the video in the viral claim was old and that the young girl belonged to a Muslim family.
This claim was previously debunked in 2023 by Soch Fact Check here.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the same video has been shared with the false claim of forced conversions in the past, particularly in 2020 and 2023.
On X, the video received 729.7k views, 6,700 likes and 5,800 reposts. It was also shared here and here.
It was also shared here, here and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: A video does not show a 9-year-old Hindu girl forcibly converted and married to a 40-year-old man. The video is actually from 2019 and shows a young girl who was rescued from a child marriage by the Sindh police.
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Background image in cover photo: Reuters
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