Minor Hindu girl Pooja Thakur abducted, converted, and married to Muslim man in Pakistan

Case ID : 0b6702a | Location : Sindh, Pakistan | Date of Incident : Sun, 18 February, 2024

Case ID : 0b6702a

Sindh, Pakistan

18 February, 2024

Minor Hindu girl Pooja Thakur abducted, converted, and married to Muslim man in Pakistan

Predatory Proselytisation

Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion

Case Summary

A minor Hindu girl, Pooja Thakur, was abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry her abductor in Moro, district Shaheed Benazirabad, Sindh province of Pakistan. A video emerged of the abductor sitting alongside a subdued-looking Pooja, claiming that they have ‘married off their own free will’ and telling Pooja’s family not to ‘bother them’. Pooja kept looking down during most of the video and doesn’t say a word. The abduction followed an established pattern, being part of the institutionalized persecution of Hindus by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the hate tracker under the category- Predatory Proselytisation. Under this, the sub-category selected here is- Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion- Harassment covers a wide range of behaviours of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour that demeans, humiliates, and intimidates a person, including threats and coercion. Harassment and threats, in this case, find their root on discriminatory grounds which has the effect of nullifying a person’s rights or infringing upon his freedom to exercise his right specifically owing to the victim’s religious identity. Verbal and physical threats and psychological or physical harassment are often used against Hindu victims because they choose to practice their professed religion. Religious harassment also includes forced and involuntary conversions by harassment, threats or coercion. Coercion includes intimidatory tactics like force-feeding a Hindu victim beef to convert to another religion, forceful circumcision etc. In several cases documented, non-Hindu perpetrators or those who harbour specific animosity towards Hinduism, harass victims simply based on their religious identity. Such cases often also include harassment to ensure the Hindu victim abandons his/her professed religion and adopts the religion of the perpetrator. In this subcategory, we would only include cases where the victim was harassed, threatened or coerced to convert. Cases where attempts were made to convert but the victim resisted would be documented in another sub-category. Such cases where Hindu victims are harassed to convert to the perpetrator’s religion are rooted in animosity towards the victim’s religious identity and are therefore documented as religiously motivated hate crimes. Here, a Hindu minor girl was kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan, a country that has experienced a persistent pattern of kidnappings, rapes, forced conversions, and ongoing harassment of Hindu minorities since its establishment. This troubling trend reflects systemic discrimination and violence against Hindu communities, where vulnerable individuals, especially young girls, are targeted for coercive religious conversion. Further, it is evident from the details that the victim was a minor. This essentially means that the element of consent and genuine change of conscience was missing ab initio. It is a well-established fact that children are more susceptible to manipulation since they are still developing emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Their brains are not fully matured, making them more vulnerable to influence and less capable of critically evaluating information. The other disturbing element here is that the Hindu minor was coerced into giving up her faith and marrying her Muslim abductor. The details in the report make it obvious that she may have been threatened and forced into saying that the marriage was consensual. Here, it is important to understand that when the victim is a minor, the "consent" to convert or enter into a romantic relationship with an adult is redundant- addressed by POCSO. Thus, it is evident that a Hindu minor was converted against her will in this case, as opposed to it being voluntary. Since the underlying offence in this case is against a minor girl of a specific faith and involves subtle tactics of indoctrination, which obviously stems from a bias against the Hindu faith, this case has been documented as a hate crime.