A minor Hindu girl was kidnapped and forced to marry an older man who converted her to Islam in Pakistan’s Sindh province, news agency PTI quoted the community members as saying on Thursday. The case came to light barely a day after another juvenile Hindu girl kidnapped in Hyderabad was returned to her family on court orders on Wednesday following a year-long ordeal, according to the PTI report.
According to Shiva Faqir Kaachi, the head of Pakistan Darawar Ittehad, the 16-year-old girl was kidnapped from her village in Hunguru on Wednesday and forced to marry a much older guy who converted her to Islam.
“The girl was taken to a seminary near the Samura area and married off. When the parents went to the seminary on Thursday to see her, the cleric refused to let them in,” Kaachi said to PTI.
“It has now become a regular occurrence for Hindu families to see their young daughters and sisters forcibly taken away and converted to be married off to Muslim men in these places,” he said.
On Wednesday, a sessions court in Hyderabad ordered a teenage girl to be reunited with her family after she was abducted from Hyderabad, converted and then married off to a Muslim man last year.
Kaachi noted that since most Hindu families in Pakistan are poor, their women are easy targets and when they are abducted, their families face significant challenges in securing their return due to a lack of support from the system.
He said his organisation, which represents the Hindu community, will pursue a legal recourse to recover the abducted teenage girl.
“How long it will take, no one knows. But we will continue to fight this injustice and crime,” Kaachi said.
In a similar incident, a Hindu girl, who was abducted just three days after her marriage, grabbed headlines in January 2022. She was allegedly converted to Islam and married to a Muslim man but she managed to escape after 14 months. The police brought her home but after a few months, she was abducted again and is yet to be recovered.