Police in Pakistan have dropped an investigation into three men who allegedly kidnapped and abused a 12-year-old Christian girl claiming that she married one of her abductors of her own will.

Farah Shaheen, now 13, spent months in the yard of a 29-year-old Muslim man who allegedly raped her and shackled her by her hands and feet, forcing her to work all day clearing animal dung. She had been taken from the eastern city of Faisalabad in June, and was rescued by police last month.

Investigators have now dropped the charges, however, because, they say Farah testified that she had consented to marry her kidnapper and convert to Islam.

Her case has been taken up by a government committee and by charities that investigate the hundreds of Christian and Hindu girls allegedly kidnapped, trafficked, married off and forced to convert to Islam each year.

A police report suggested she was 16 or 17, but Farah’s birth certificate confirmed her age last June as 12. Her father, Asif Masih, dismissed the police report as “an utter fabrication” and accused officers of having ignored his report of her abduction for months. He told ACN, a Catholic charity, that his daughter was suffering severe mental trauma, and appealed to Imran Khan, the prime minister, for help.