Hindus in Pakistan, especially girls, are leading a particularly vulnerable life in the country where forced conversion of Hindus into Islam has become a common norm. In Pakistan’s Balochistan province, another Hindu girl, who was missing since June 17, is now found to have married a Muslim man. The girl’s parents have alleged that the man kidnapped their daughter, forcibly converted her to Islam against her wishes and then married her. Legitimising their marriage, the judicial magistrate has allowed the man and the girl to live together.
The Hindu girl named Reshma was missing since June 17. She hails from Garhi Sabhyo area of Sindh province. Her family had been frantically searching her since her disappearance. They suspected that a man named Dil Murad Chandio abducted their daughter and forced her to convert to Islam before marrying her.
While Reshma, who belongs to the Bagri community, appeared in court in Dera Allahyar with her husband this week, claiming that she is over 20 years of age and has married Chandio as per her wish, without any coercion.
She further added that her name has been changed to Basheeran after converting to Islam. The judicial magistrate took cognisance of her testimony and allowed her to stay with her husband. However, her parents have filed a complaint at Sadar police station in Jacobabad.
Leaders of Hindu organisations have consistently protested against communities of their girl being forcibly abducted before being converted to Islam. They have alleged that Sindh has turned into a hotbed of such crimes where Hindu girls have been picked up against their wish, brazenly converted to Islam under duress and then forcibly married off to their captors.
Rampant conversions in Sindh, Pakistan
Recently, even as the pandemic was sweeping through Pakistan, a Hindu family in Karachi was attacked amidst coronavirus lockdown in Pakistan on April 12, 2020, for refusing to embrace Islam. The case is from PIA township in Karachi where a Maulvi named Usman teamed up with the Hindu family’s neighbour named Shahid to assault the minorities for their denial to accept Islam.
Before that, radical Islamists and clerics in Pakistan demanded the beheading of a Hindu minor girl named Mehak Kumari, who was abducted, converted to Islam and forcibly married to a Muslim man, for leaving Islam. Mehak was abducted from the Jacobabad district of Sindh province in Pakistan on January 15. In a video going viral on Twitter, few radical Islamists and clerics of Pakistan are heard blaming 14-year-old Mehak of murtad, or an act of Apostasy, and are demanding death punishment, accusing her of insulting Islam.
