A 10-year-old Hindu girl was abducted and forcibly married to a Muslim man in Pakistan’s Sindh province, but authorities managed to rescue her. The incident highlighted a troubling trend of kidnapping, forced conversion, and marriage of underage Hindu girls in rural areas of Pakistan.
According to Shiva Kachhi, president of the Pakistan Darawar Ittehad, an NGO advocating for minority rights, a 15-year-old Hindu girl was married off to a 50-year-old Muslim man in a separate case. She remains missing. Kachhi noted that corrupt police officers often collaborate to create fake documents, which are presented in court when the victims’ families seek justice.
The recent abduction of the 10-year-old girl occurred in Kot Ghulam Muhammad village in Mirpurkhas, where the girl was taken from outside her home and brought to the Sirhandi Air Samaro seminary. She was reportedly coerced into converting to Islam before being married off to a man named Shahid Talpur. However, following intervention from local officials, including the SSP, Anwar Ali Talpur, the girl was rescued and returned to her family.
It also came to light that the 15-year-old girl has been missing since last Sunday, with her abductors preparing fake marriage and conversion certificates to falsely claim she is 20 years old.
In June this year, a 14-year-old Hindu girl was kidnapped and married off to a Muslim man. She was allegedly kidnapped at gunpoint in the Benazirabad district of Sindh in front of her family. A Pakistani court refused to send her to her parents. The court’s order came amid protests from the girl and her demand that she be allowed to go home.
In another case from March, a Hindu girl from Sindh’s Rohri town was killed for resisting a kidnap and conversion bid by a leader of the local Lashari tribe. The family alleged that they received no help from the police.
(With inputs from PTI.)