A married Hindu girl abducted from Pakistan’s southern Sindh province has said she was threatened by her kidnappers to convert to Islam and raped after she refused to change her religion, the latest in a string of such atrocities committed against members of the minority community.
The girl said in a disturbing video uploaded on social media that she was raped in Samaro town in the Umarkot district and the police are yet to register a case against the suspects.
Till Sunday, the police in Mirpurkhas have failed to register a case against the accused persons named by the girl, a Hindu local leader said.
“The girl and her family are sitting outside the police station but no case has been registered as yet,” the leader said.
The girl, who is already married, claims in her video that she was abducted by Ibrahim Mangrio, Punho Mangrio and their accomplice.
She said they threatened her and told her to convert to Islam, but when she refused, she was raped for three days.
The victim said she returned home after managing to escape her abductors.
The abduction and forced conversion of young Hindu girls have become a major problem in the interior of Sindh, which has a large Hindu population in Thar, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Ghotki and Khairpur areas. Most of the Hindu community members are labourers.
In June last year, teenage Hindu girl Kareena Kumari told a court here that she was forcibly converted to Islam and married to a Muslim man.
In March last year, three Hindu girls – Satran Oad, Kaveeta Bheel and Anita Bheel – were abducted, converted to Islam and married to Muslim men within eight days.
In another case on March 21 last year, Pooja Kumari was brutally shot dead outside her home in Rohri, Sukkur. Apparently, a Pakistani man wanted to marry her but she refused and he and two of his accomplices opened fire on her a few days later.
Not only young teenage girls but older Hindu women have also fallen prey to abduction and forced conversions.
Gori Kohli, a mother of four children, was abducted from Khipro in Sindh and later it transpired she had converted to Islam and married Aijaz Marri, the man accused of kidnapping her.
(PTI)
Damian Talbot