Hindu girl shot dead in Pakistan Amid rising atrocities against minority communities in Pakistan, another case of brutality came to the fore where a young girl was shot dead in broad daylight on Saturday. According to media reports, some unidentified gunmen attacked a girl going from Kashmore to Kanthkot in a car on Saturday. The girl has been identified as Sarika, daughter of Vasudev.
At present, the victim is undergoing treatment, where her condition is said to be critical. Some media reports also claimed that the car she was traveling in caught fire after the attack. There are several videos and photos of the victim on social media platforms, in which she is seen moaning in pain after being shot. So far, the authorities have not briefed the media about the incident and no details about the arrest of the gunmen are yet known.
Second such attack in last two weeks
Significantly, this was the second such attack in less than two weeks. Earlier on December 29, a 40-year-old Bhil woman was allegedly gangraped and brutally murdered in Sindh province. According to Krishna Kumari, whose Twitter handle describes her as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) senator from Tharparkar Sindh, the woman was identified as Daya Bhil (40). Kumari claimed that the woman was a widow and her body was found in a very bad condition. She claimed that the victim’s body was cut into several pieces, with the accused removing the flesh of the entire head.
Minority women live in fear as forced conversions and marriages continue in Pakistan
According to a report by the International Forum for Rights and Society (IFFRAS), there has been a rise in forced conversions and marriages in the Muslim-majority country over the years. The report states that this incident of brutality has put Hindu and Christian families in constant fear of their daughters being taken away.
The report titled “Conversion without consent” talks about the rise in violence against non-Muslim women while the state remains apathetic and the judicial system denies timely justice in most cases. According to the IFFRAS report, the report examined 100 cases of kidnapping, forced conversions, and forced and child marriages of girls and women from the Christian community across Pakistan. Punjab province has the highest number of such cases at 86 per cent, Sindh at 11 per cent, Islamabad at 2 per cent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at 1 per cent and Balochistan at none.
Strong link between reports of forced conversions and child marriage
According to Voice of Justice, there have been several cases in Pakistan in which teenage girls, mainly from religious minority communities, are abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married to Muslim men, who are usually the perpetrators of their abduction. The report states that there is a strong link between reports of forced conversions and child marriages. “Criminals mostly manipulate the law and the justice system to escape from their crimes, due to the absence of legislation that deals with forced conversions, and the lack of enforcement of existing domestic law; practices,” the report said.