On June 2, 2023, a fourteen-year-old young Hindu girl named Sohana Kumar Sharma was forcibly abducted and violently seized from her home in Benazirbad District in the Sindh province of Pakistan. She was forced to marry a Muslim man against her wishes and convert to Islam.
Additionally, a Pakistani Court rubbed salt in her wounds by denying her the right to revisit her home and parents. She made desperate pleas but to no avail.
With guns in their hand, the tutor and his associates seized her from her devastated mother. Her father, Dilip Kumar, went to file an FIR (First Information Report). He believed that swift action would occur and his daughter would return home.
A distressing video emerged on social media where Sohana, under duress, proclaimed her alleged conversion to Islam and forced her to marry a Muslim. Nevertheless, their parents vehemently maintained that she was just a minor. She had been coerced into making those statements against her will.
In their quest for justice, her parents went to the Larkana District Court on June 9, 2023. She narrated the tragic incidents in a courageous testimony and expressed her desire to be reunited with her loving parents.
However, the judge decide to adjourn the case until June 12, 2023. She was kept in a women’s shelter home and is still waiting for judicial and legal proceedings.
Her mother, Janma Sharma, bravely spoke in court, saying that her daughter was receiving private tuition and shockingly her tutor approached her family a few days before the abduction. He also demanded the family to pay a substantial loan of Rs 100,000.
On March 31, 2023, the Members of the Pakistan Dharwad Ittehad (a Hindu Organisation) complained that Sindhi Hindus, in particular, are facing the problem that 12- and 13-year-old girls from their communities are forcefully seized from their families and married to Muslim men subsequently.
On March 27, 2023, a minor Hindu girl named Kanwal Kumari, in Quetta, was forcibly converted to Islam and subsequently married to Amir Nawaz.
In another instance, on October 31, 2022, Guddi Kohli, a mother of four children, was abducted from Khipro in Sindh and later transpired that she convert to Islam and marry Ajiz Marri, the man accused of kidnapping her.
In August 2022, a girl named Chanda Maharaj was forcibly abducted from the Fateh Chowk In Hyderabad (Sindh). The law enforcement agencies including the SSP of Hyderabad, did not take action. She was later recovered from her captors two months later.
In June 2022, a teenage Hindu girl Kareena Kumari met the same fate, She was abducted, converted to Islam and married to a Muslim Man.
In March 2022, three Hindu girls-Satran Oad, Kaveeta Bheel and Anita Bheel, were forced to convert to Islam and married to Muslim men.
In another case, on March 21, 2022, another girl named Pooja Kumari was brutally shot dead outside her some in Sukkur (Pakistan) on the grounds of forcible conversion to Islam and marrying Muslim men
In another instance, Gori Kohli, a mother of four children, was abducted from Khipro in Sindh and later transpired that she converted to Islam and marry Ajiz Marri, the man accused of kidnapping her.
On March 11, 2021, A thirteen-year-old Hindu girl from the Balkhani tribe of Sindh, Kavita Bai, was abducted, converted to Islam and later married to her abductor.
The abduction and forced conversions of young Hindu girls have become a major problem in the interior of Sindh, which has a large Hindu Population in areas like Thar, Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, Ghotki, and Khairpur. Most of them are labourers.
According to Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, a total of 1000 girls are forcibly converted to Islam every year in the country. Out of the 207 million population of Pakistan, 96 per cent are Muslims, and Hindus are just 2.1 per cent.
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