FAKE ALERT: 10-year-old girl’s marriage to 40-year-old Tariq in Pakistan shared to attack Hinduism

CLAIM
Twitter user Mahtab Raza posted a photo of a minor girl sitting in a bridal outfit with a much older man to claim that the 10-year-old girl was forcefully married to 40-year-old Shivnath Chaturvedi, cousin of her late father Ashok Chaturvedi.
“Shame on Hindus. Shame on the pandit who presided over the marriage rituals. Shame on those people who attended and ate at this ceremony. And shame on Hinduism, which legally allows such child-marriages,” reads a loose translation of what Raza wrote while tweeting this photo.

Facebook user Tanveer Ahmad made the same claims using the same photo.

TRUTH
The incident is from Pakistan. Name of the middle-aged man who marries the minor girl in Tariq.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY
Using reverse-image search, we found an English news report dated August 20, 2020 from Baaghi TV in Pakistan.

Titled ‘A 10-year-old girl married to an old man’, the report carries the same image that is now being shared linked with Hinduism.
The incident is from Mouza Ram Kali area of Multan city in Pakistan.
As per the report, a 10-year-old orphan girl was arranged to marry a 40-year-old man in the Ram Kali area on the outskirts of Ahmadpur. The mother arranged the girl’s marriage to her 40-year-old cousin.
Taking a cue from this report, we used relevant keywords and did extensive search on Google search engine and found a video report from a famous Pakistani news channel GNN.
Titled ‘Police arrest 40 year man for marrying 10 year old’, the video was posted on August 17, 2020 and reported about the same incident. The news anchors identified the 40-year-old man as Tariq, while the religious identity of 10-year-old girl could not be ascertained.

VERDICT
Times Fact Check has found that news of a child marriage from Pakistan where a 40-year-old Tariq forcefully married a 10-year-old girl is being used to defame Hinduism.