A judge sitting at the High Court in the eastern city of Lahore gave the ruling on the grounds that in Islam a female can marry if she has reached puberty, the officials told AFP.

He accepted a joint petition by the girl, named as Zeenat Bibi, and her 25-year-old husband Babar Javed and dismissed charges of rape which were filed by her father.

“This is the first time that a court has validated marriage of a 12-year-old girl in Pakistan,” her lawyer Azeem Sarwar said. The decision was handed down on Wednesday.

The ruling also overrides the Muslim Family Law under which the marriageable age for girls in Pakistan is 16 years, he added.

Pakistan has regularly come under fire from rights groups for failing to tackle the social issues affecting women and children, as well as sexual and domestic violence against females.

Justice Shabbar Raza Rizvi observed that in Islam “puberty starts with menstruation and as such the marriage of Zeenat and Babar Javed is declared valid.”

“A pubertal woman can marry competently, validly, legally and of her own accord,” the judge said in his order.

The couple, from the industrial city of Faisalabad, got married on January 19 but Zeenat’s father registered a case against Javed saying that he abducted her and subsequently raped her.

Sarwar denied that Zeenat was abducted and insisted that she married Javed of her own free will “according to Islamic Injunctions.”

The girl, now aged 12 years and seven months, was medically examined and it was “proved” that she had reached puberty, the lawyer said.

The judge also relied on an earlier ruling by Pakistan’s Supreme Court that a young girl can enter into a marriage deed without the consent of her guardian, he added.

Pakistan’s government has sought to change the country’s image and recently stepped into a high-profile gang rape case, ordering the rearrest of five men who had been cleared of attacking a woman.

The victim in that case, Mukhtiar Mai, herself became a noted rights campaigner while the acquittals earlier this year sparked international outrage.

Pakistan also ordered an inquiry last month into the case of a college girl who publicly threatened to burn herself to death after she was allegedly gang-raped by kidnappers and then by the police officers who rescued her.