A shocking case that has sparked widespread discussion across South Asia over the past week has emerged from Pakistan’s Balochistan province, where the parents of a three-year-old girl sold her in marriage to a 60-year-old man for Rs 2.5 million ($9,000 USD). The incident took place in Chaman, a border city near Afghanistan. Local reports say the families had completed the paperwork for the proposed marriage, but they had not handed the child over to the alleged groom because they had not yet paid the full amount. A massive public outrage over the case forced the police to intervene, arrest the girl’s father, and begin searching for the alleged groom, identified as Salah Uddin. Authorities placed the child, identified in reports as Babbo, and her mother under police protection.
Police said the proposed marriage involved walwar, a Pashtun custom under which the groom or his family pays money to the bride’s family. Police intervened before the full payment took place, so the marriage arrangement had not taken effect in practice.
The case has become more serious, because police have linked their investigation to the death of the girl’s 15-year-old sister, Shukria Bibi. According to police accounts that The Media Line reported, the girl’s father, Abdul Baqi, had earlier arranged Shukria’s marriage when she was 13 to Kamran, the son of Salah Uddin. Police said the family received Rs 1.5 million in that arrangement.
Police later found Shukria’s body in Kuchlak, near Quetta, and arrested Kamran on suspicion of killing her. Investigators are examining whether a dispute over another proposed marriage played a role in the events surrounding her death. The investigation is ongoing.
The case has drawn renewed attention to other similar incidents in the Islamic nation, in which families or informal community councils have used minor girls as a means of resolving financial or family disputes, or offered them as compensation for conflicts under the system of vani and swara. Local councils called jirgas facilitate such arrangements to settle feuds, conflicts, or alleged wrongdoing. In December 2024, in Mansehra, three members of a jirga, including a cleric and a councilor, ordered the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to be handed over for marriage to a man whose sister had eloped with the girl’s brother. The jirga warned the families not to approach the police.
In May 2025, police in Dera Ismail Khan arrested five people, including a cleric and four panchayat members, after an eight-year-old girl was allegedly married to a 12-year-old boy under vani. According to police and Dawn, the panchayat had ordered the arrangement after two suspects allegedly raped a 12-year-old boy. The council reportedly ordered the sister of one of the accused to marry the alleged victim.
Another case emerged in March 2025 in Dera Ismail Khan, where police said a local panchayat had ordered that an 11-year-old girl to vani. The girl’s father, a poor barber, was allegedly targeted by influential local men after his nephew spoke to one of their daughters. Police said the men abducted and tortured him before convening a panchayat that allegedly forced him to sign a stamp paper agreeing to give his daughter in vani. The panchayat had also allegedly taken Rs 700,000 from him. The father later consumed poisonous pills and died in hospital. Police arrested two suspects and recovered the girl.
In 2014, police in Battagram registered a case after a local jirga ordered an eight-year-old girl to marry a 26-year-old man to settle a family dispute.
The most extreme case matching the pattern described above occurred in Pakistan’s Punjab province in 2017. Police reported that a panchayat in the Muzaffarabad area ordered the brother of a 12-year-old rape victim to rape the teenage sister of the man accused of the original assault. The brother allegedly carried out the order. Police later told the Supreme Court that they had arrested all 29 people nominated in connection with the panchayat-ordered assault.
These cases reveal a disturbing pattern in Pakistan in which little girls face punishment for the crimes or actions of adult men. Such practices represent an extreme form of patriarchy that seems out of place in the modern world, and belongs more to a pre-medieval age, making it difficult to believe that they persist in 2026.
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