The horrifying atrocities meted out against the minorities in Pakistan continues unabated. Just days after a historic temple in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was razed and torched by a rabid Islamist mob, two Hindus have been found hanging inside a law enforcement official’s room in the Sindh province of Pakistan.
According to the reports, two Hindus—Babita Meghawar and her relative Dongar Meghawar—were found hanging from the ceiling in a room of a police officer ASI Gul Mohammad Sand in Mithi, Tharparker, Sindh. Pakistani activist and lawyer Rahat Austin has reported that Babita was the sister-in-law of Dongar Meghawar and they both were tortured before being murdered.
#Breaking | 2 girls found hanging inside a police officer’s room in Pakistan’s Sindh.
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) January 1, 2021
Pradeep Dutta with details. pic.twitter.com/mH9nlMVhQ5
Minorities in Pakistan persecuted because of their faith
The minorities in Pakistan suffer a perennial threat of persecution, both from the non-state actors as well as the Pakistani establishment. Recently, a rabid Islamist mob destroyed a Hindu temple in northwestern Pakistan by setting it on fire.
The Krishna Dwara temple, which is situated in Karak’s Teri union council, came under attack by hundreds of residents who set fire to the building, then razed it down with hammers and crude weapons.
Reportedly, the temple was built after Guru Shri Paramhans Dayal was laid to rest at the site in July 1919. However, the Muslim residents of the area had closed the temple after the Partition in 1947. In 2015, the Krishna Dwara temple was restored on the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan.
Rohit Kumar, an advocate and the Hindu activist said the residents violated the agreement by vandalising the temple. Earlier, Hindus and the Muslims of the village had signed an agreement on December 22 agreeing that the renovation of the temple would not exceed the specified area.
However, the Muslim residents of the area had alleged that that the Hindu community was illegally expanding the temple building. They said the matter was reported to the police too.
According to the Muslims, as police did not take action against the Hindus, they themselves took the law into their hands and demolished the temple.
Minority girls, especially Hindus, targeted, abducted and converted to Islam in Pakistan
The death of the two Hindus came on the heels of an Associated Press report which said that more than 1,000 girls, a majority of them Hindus, are abducted, raped and converted to Islam every year in Pakistan. The report suggests that as many as 1000 Christian, Sikh and Hindu women between 12 and 25 years are abducted, raped, married, and forced to convert to Islam. Due to limited financial means of the families of such victims, many cases go unreported.
The girls are mostly kidnapped by their own acquaintances and relatives or by older men looking for brides. Sometimes they are taken by powerful landlords as payment for outstanding debts by their daily waged parents. Police often look the other way, doing little to help these persecuted minorities. Once converted to Islam, the girls are quickly married off, often to older men or their abductors, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Pakistan has a history of committing atrocities against the minority community, especially Hindu girls where they are often kidnapped and forcefully converted to Islam. Many of these girls are minors and are sexually exploited. In August this year, some unidentified men led by one Muhammad Adil barged into a Hindu family’s house in Sindh and abducted their daughter Kavita. She was later forcibly converted to Islam and married off to her abductor.
A minor Hindu girl was abducted in Jacobabad in June this year. Two minor girls, one Hindu and other Christian (hearing and speech impaired) were abducted on different occasions in May. In April, two Hindu girls were abducted from Sindh province and in January, a Sikh girl was abducted, followed by an attack on Nankana Sahib Gurudwara.
