Tutor Akhtiar abducted a minor Hindu girl Suhana, then converted & married her. Sparked huge row in Sindh Assembly.

Pakistan: Minor Hindu girl’s “forced conversion” sparks tense debate in Sindh Provincial Assembly.

14-yrs-old  Suhana Sharma abducted at gunpoint, converted & forcefully married by the key Muslim abductor Ali Akhtiar.

Ranjeet Rana | HENB | Karachi | June 10, 2023:: The Sindh Provincial Assembly saw a heated debate over the recent kidnapping of a teenage Hindu girl, named Suhana Sharma.

Mukesh Kumar Chawla, the provincial minister gave the house assurance that the government would take the required steps to invoke and enforce the applicable laws.

He clearly asserted that no one should be forced to convert under pressure while emphasising the fundamental right of people to freely select their religion.

The assembly session under the leadership of speaker Agha Siraj Durrani began after a two hours delay. Lal Chand a PPP (Pakistan People’s Party)  MPA, voiced his outrage at the purported kidnapping and forced marriage of Suhana Sharma, 14, who is a member of the minority Hindu Community.

Chand claimed that the minority populations’ voices were being silenced even on the most minor issues after the speaker told him to raise his concerns later. Chand was silenced when the speaker responded by turning off his microphone.

Later, Chand informed the lawmakers that Sharma, a 14-year-old member of their community, had been kidnapped in Qazi Ahmad. Her nikahnama (marriage certificate), which proved that she had wed a man of her choosing, was then produced.

From the Hindu social activist Narain Das Bheel, it is known, the 14 yrs Suhana Sharma who was abducted and forcefully converted was present in the court, she gave the statement as she wanted to go with her parents but the judge sent her to the Safe House. She kept crying in the police van. The Court fixed the next hearing to 12 June.  Court has not taken any action against the kidnappers yet.

On June 7, A Minor Hindu girl Suhana Sharma d/o Dileep of village Dost Muhammad Colony, Dist. Saheed Benazir Abad of Sindh province, was abducted from her home at gunpoint by 3 armed men, Akhtar Gabol, Faizan Jat, and Sarang Khaskheli who barged into Sharma’s house with the force of weapons and took also gold ornaments from the house keeping the family members as hostages.

According to information, the tutor of Suhana, Akhtiar Ali abducted 14-year-old Hindu girl Suhana Sharma.  For  Islamic conversion,  her age was shown as 18 years when even her father’s marriage has not completed 18 years.

Pakistan , which is already struggling with the adverse political and economic situation and continues to bear the brunt of forced marriages and conversions, Human Rights Without Frontiers reported. Human Rights Without Frontiers is a Europe-based organization that tracks incidents worldwide where people are imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of religion or belief.

According to the data compiled by one of Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s (CSW) local partners in Pakistan, the Centre for Social Justice, 202 incidents were recorded and documented between 2021 and 2022. Almost all of them took place within the Sindh and Punjab provinces.

Out of 202 cases, 120 Hindu women and girls, 80 Christians and 2 Sikhs. The figures show that girls from “low” caste Hindu communities are the most at-risk group. And among those figures, only 20 were confirmed to be over 18 years old and 133 were under 18 (including 55 under 14 years old). In the remaining 49 cases, the age was unknown or unconfirmed.

In the data, CSW said a Hindu woman named Pooja Kumari was 18-yearsold, when on March 21, 2022, three men made an intrusion into her home,

Earlier, on October 26, 2022, six UN Special Rapporteurs, including the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and the Working
Group on the discrimination against women and girls released a common statement from which Jonathan de Leyser excluded qualifying words such as “allegedly” and “reportedly” when he quoted a part of it “because these are all facts that CSW could confirm.”

“These women and girls are then (reportedly) forced by their abductors to appear before courts and give testimony and/or sign official documents which attest to their being of age and having married and converted to Islam of their own free will. This coercion (reportedly) takes place under the threat of violence against them or their families. Perpetrators of these offences (are alleged to) enjoy a significant degree of impunity, enabled in part by the actions of the security forces and the justice system,” Jonathan de Leyser said.

Dozens of such news of abduction, conversion, and forced marriage of Hindu girls by the Muslim perpetrators come every week. But the so-called Human Rights Organisations, Women’s Liberation Forums do not care to intervene with such violations of Rights and Justice for the minorities in Pakistan.

On June 8, the case of Raveena (15 yrs) came to fore as she was abducted at gunpoint by the Islamist forces led by Jumoon Pathan and Akhtar Pathan.

The horrific situation of minority people in Pakistan can’t be explained anyway. The Islamic Country of Pakistan is now out of the domain of civic society so far.

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__Inputs from ANI & Twitter handle of Narain Das Bheel & The Rise News.