A Hindu girl has reportedly been abducted in Hyderabad, Pakistan’s Sindh province.
According to the girl’s parents, Chandra Mehraj was abducted while returning home from Fateh Chowk in Hyderabad. A police report was filed, but the girl has yet to be found, according to reports.
This comes just days after three women from Pakistan’s minority Hindu community were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam, bringing to light atrocities against minorities in the country.
On September 24, a 14-year-old girl named Meena Meghwar was kidnapped from the Nasarpur area, and another girl was abducted while returning home in Mirpurkhas.
In the same town, a Hindu man named Ravi Kurmi claimed that his wife Rakhi was kidnapped and later returned after converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim man. However, according to the local police, Rakhi converted to Islam and married Ahmed Chandio of her own free will.
In recent years, Pakistan has seen a wave of atrocities against Hindus. Kareena Kumari, a teenage Hindu girl, testified in court in June this year that she was forcibly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man.
Three months earlier, three Hindu girls named Satran Oad, Kaveeta Bheel, and Anita Bheel died in the same way.
On March 21, a Hindu girl named Pooja Kumari was shot dead outside her home in Sukkur after she refused a Pakistani man’s marriage proposal.
In October of last year, a parliamentary committee in Pakistan rejected a bill prohibiting forced religious conversions, with then-religious affairs minister Noorul Haq Qadri stating that the environment was not conducive to enacting such legislation. According to Dawn, the minister went on to say that a law prohibiting forcible conversions would disrupt the country’s peace and make minorities more vulnerable.
According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Factbook, Hindus, Christians, and other minorities make up only 3.5% of Pakistan’s population as of 2020.
