Abduction of Hindu girls and their forced marriage to Muslims is a routine affair in Pakistan. She had also resisted forced conversion in the past.
18-year-old Pooja Kumar Oudh was shot dead in the middle of the road by one Wahid Lashiri for resisting abduction and forced marriage. Wahid was out to abduct the girl and forcibly convert her. Pooja had refused to convert. The incident happened in Sikkur in Sindh.
Every year, women belonging to the minority Hindu group are forcibly converted and married off to Muslim men.
The victim's parents staged a protest demanding action against Wahid and those involved with him.
Multiple reports have described how Pakistan has become unsafe for religious minorities. They barely have any right.
"Religious minorities remained unable to enjoy the freedom of religion or belief guaranteed to them under the constitution. For the Ahmadiya community in Punjab, this included the desecration of several sites of worship. Both the Hindu and Christian communities in Sindh and Punjab continued to report cases of forced conversion. In Punjab, girls as young as 14 were forcibly converted and coerced into marriage," an Observer Research Foundation (ORF) report published in May 2020 noted.
After massive protests in 2019, the Sindh government had attempted to criminalise forced conversions and marriages but had to take back the bill after pressure from the Islamists.
According to the Peoples Commission for Minorities' Rights and the Centre for Social Justice, 156 incidents of forced conversions had taken place lately.
Hindus constitute less than 2 per cent of the population in Pakistan.
In December 2020, the U.S. State Department had declared Pakistan "a country of particular concern" for violations of religious freedoms. ABC News had reported, "the declaration was based in part on an appraisal by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that underage girls in the minority Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities were "kidnapped for forced conversion to Islam… forcibly married and subjected to rape."
