A 16-year-old Hindu girl, Maryam Kolhi, was abducted recently in Mirpur Khas district of Sindh, Pakistan. In the town of Pithoro, the minor Hindu girl Maryam was being dropped to school by her brother Ramesh. Armed neighbourhood residents Muhammad Kumbhar, Yusuf Nohri, and Mushtaq Leghari confronted the brother and abducted Maryam.
A video was later shared on social media in which a scared-looking Maryam could be seen reading from a piece of paper that she is ‘ 18 years old, and has converted to Islam and is marrying of her own will’. She also asks for ‘protection from her parents and family if they try to obstruct her marrriage’. A Pakistan flag can be seen fluttering outside the window of the place where the child was being made to utter these lines.
Multiple cases like Maryam Kolhi’s are reported regularly in Pakistan. Abduction, rape, forced conversion and marriage of minor Hindu girls is a common occurrence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Most such girls either end up dead, abandoned or trafficked after a few years of ‘marriage’ to much older Muslim men. At least 1000 minority girls suffer such sex slavery every year in Sindh province alone.
Apart from this, Pakistani Hindus face systemic and institutionalized persecution and discrimination, such as frequent attacks on Hindu temples, demonization in education curriculum, bonded labor, untouchability, and antipathy of police and judiciary leading to denial of basic human rights.
