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A Christian woman who was kidnapped in Pakistan last year is believed to have been forced to marry her Muslim captor, her family claims.

Student Maryam Mushtaq, 24, was abducted as she was walking with her younger brother on her way home from college in Lahore last month.

Her family reported the kidnapping, however, police told them that Miss Mushtaq was not being held against her will, but had married the Muslim man who abducted her.Miss Mushtaq, who had hoped to study to be able to become a teacher, was abducted in front of her 11-year-old brother by two Muslim men and bundled into a car.

Her mother Mussarat Mushtaq, 53, reported the abduction and gave police a description of the kidnappers' vehicle and a licence plate number. Two days later she received a phone call from the local police, who told her that her daughter was not kidnapped but married.

A man named Muhammed Ali, 32, who Miss Mushtaq's family claim is her kidnapper, had entered the police station and provided a marriage certificate. 

However, Miss Mushtaq's family claim that she would never voluntarily marry a Muslim, and say that she is being held against her will and has been forced into marriage. 

Despite the Mushtaq family all being devoted Christians, the marriage certificate for  Miss Mushtaq and her alleged kidnapper lists her religion as Islam.

'Three years ago my husband died of cancer, two years ago Maryam's sister died. Now kidnappers have taken away my daughter, I am devastated,' her mother, Mrs Mushtaq, says.

'Maryam was a good intelligent hard working girl, she went back to college to improve her chances for employment so that she could support her family. The kidnappers have destroyed her future.

'Maryam had a good relationship with her brother Romail and remaining sister Khusboo, 23, they would know if she had been interested in this man. None of them have ever even seen him before.

'Maryam like the rest of us attends church every week there is no way she would give up her whole life and salvation to marry a Muslim man. Jesus has always been the centre of her life.'

The British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA), which has been helping the family, says that local police are bringing Miss Mushtaq and Ali to court for a hearing this week.
However BPCA fears that as Miss Mushtaq is still living with her alleged kidnapper, she may be forced to tell the court that she is in a lawful marriage. 

'Yet again an innocent Christian girl has been kidnapped and forced into Islamic marriage,' Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the BPCA, said. 'We do not know the depravity or the brutality she has had to face but her entrapment will have a sordid edge to it no doubt.  'Police have responded relatively quickly, but had to in circumstances of a traumatic daylight abduction that was witnessed by many. 

'The abductors are known and yet the girl still has not been returned to the family and it is feared that corrupt police could collude with the kidnappers if bribed significantly. 

'A justice system that does not permit the release of an abductee to her family is indicative of a flawed and failing rule of law.