Hindu wedding procession attacked, guests assaulted and bride targeted for attempted abduction by Muslim men in Pakistan

Case ID : 45f5060 | Location : Umerkot District, Sindh, Pakistan | Date of Incident : Wed, 3 December, 2025

Case ID : 45f5060

Umerkot District, Sindh, Pakistan

3 December, 2025

Hindu wedding procession attacked, guests assaulted and bride targeted for attempted abduction by Muslim men in Pakistan

Attack not resulting in death

Communal clash/attack

Attacked for Hindu identity

Case Summary

In Umerkot, Sindh, a Hindu wedding procession faced attack, the guests suffered assault, and even the bride and groom endured an attack by a group of seven Muslim men. The accused also attempted to abduct the Hindu bride. According to media reports, the Hindu bride, Bhaghvi, daughter of Har Chand Kohli of Dego Farm and belonging to the Hindu Kohli community, was returning home with her groom and the wedding procession when the incident occurred near Sindh Darbar Hotel in Umerkot. Witnesses state that seven armed Muslim individuals attempted to forcibly abduct the bride. The group included individuals identified by the victims as Ali Mari, Dilawar Banglani, Murad Mari, and several others. The attackers also assaulted the groom, the bride, and members of the wedding party during the attempt. Bystanders present near the hotel intervened, prompting the armed men to flee the scene. The groom belonged to the Sufi Faqeer community, while the bride’s family resided in Dego Farm. Following the incident, community representatives and Hindu Minority Rights Organisations urged the Senior Superintendent of Police Umerkot to take immediate notice of the case, ensure security for the affected family, and initiate action against the accused. The organisations confirmed that, with their efforts, a First Information Report had been registered regarding the attempted abduction on 5th December 2025. The First Information Report was based on the statement of the bride’s parents, who described the incident as follows: “On 4th December 2025, at around 3:30 PM, I was present at my home when my daughter stepped outside for some work. At that moment, a car arrived in which three people were present. They attempted to forcibly kidnap my daughter. When she shouted for help, neighbours gathered, and the suspects fled. We recognise the individuals involved and can identify them. They also issued threats of serious consequences. We request that strict legal action be taken against them according to the law.” Hindu community members and rights groups strongly condemned the incident, calling it a targeted attack against a vulnerable minority. They emphasised the need for swift investigation, protection for the family, and legal proceedings in accordance with the law. Even Shiva Kacchi, a Hindu activist of Darawar Ittehad, a minority rights organisation in Pakistan, tweeted about this on his official X handle. At the time of writing this report, the authorities had not yet released an official statement, and the investigation remained ongoing. This case highlights the persecution faced by the Hindu minorities in Pakistan, marked by systemic discrimination, violence, and forced conversions. Hindu women, particularly young girls, are often abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and married off to Muslim men with little to no legal recourse. Temples are frequently vandalised or destroyed, and Hindu communities are subjected to social and economic marginalisation. Blasphemy laws are disproportionately used against Hindus, leading to false accusations and severe punishments. Many Hindu families are forced to flee their homes due to religious intolerance, living in constant fear of attacks. This sustained persecution highlights the dire conditions for Hindus in Pakistan, where their religious identity makes them targets of oppression.

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case is being added to the tracker under the primary category- Attack not resulting in death. The subcategory selected is- Communal Clash/Attack. Communal clash is a form of collective violence that involves clashes between groups belonging to different religious identities. For a communal clash between Hindus and non-Hindus to qualify as a religiously motivated hate crime, the trigger of the violence itself would have to be anti-Hindu in essence. For example, if there is a Hindu religious procession that comes under attack from a non-Hindu mob and after the initial attack, Hindus retaliate in self-defence, leading to a communal clash between the two religious communities. While at a later stage, both communities are involved in the clash/violence, the initial trigger of the violence was by the non-Hindu mob against the Hindus and therefore, it could safely be termed as an anti-Hindu violence. Further, the trigger would also have to be religiously motivated. In the cited example, the attack by the non-Hindu mob was against religious processions and therefore, can be concluded to be religiously motivated. In some cases, the trigger may be non-religious, however, it develops into religious violence against Hindus at a later stage. In such cases too, the foundational animosity towards Hindus becomes the motivating factor of the crime and therefore, it would be classified as a religiously motivated hate crime against Hindus under this category. The other subcategory selected is- Attacked for Hindu identity. In several cases, Hindus are attacked merely for their Hindu identity without any perceived provocation. A classic example of this category of religiously motivated hate crime is a murder in 2016. 7 ISIS terrorists were convicted for shooting a school principal in Kanpur because they got ‘triggered’ seeing the Kalava on his wrist and tilak that he had put. In this, the Hindu victim had offered no provocation except for his Hindu religious identity. The motivation for the murder was purely religious, driven by religious supremacy. Such cases where Hindus are targeted merely for their religious identity would be documented as a hate crime under this category. In this case, the attack on the Hindu wedding procession in Umerkot, Sindh, exemplifies an anti-Hindu hate crime in Pakistan, where Hindu minorities endure relentless persecution through targeted violence. Seven armed Muslim men assaulted guests, including the vulnerable bride Bhaghvi from the Hindu Kohli community and her groom, as they returned home near Sindh Darbar Hotel. No provocation existed from the Hindu side; the procession simply practised their sacred religious traditions. This unprovoked onslaught by the identified Muslim attackers—Ali Mari, Dilawar Banglani, Murad Mari, and others—stemmed directly from deep-seated religious animosity towards Hindus, manifesting as communal fury against their visible Hindu identity during a joyous wedding rite. Such assaults on Hindu celebrations underscore a pattern of hatred designed to humiliate and terrorise the minority Hindu community in Pakistan. The armed Muslim group's brazen attempt to abduct the Hindu bride further exposes the religious motivation fuelling this hate crime, aligning with Pakistan's notorious epidemic of Hindu women being kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married off to Muslim captors. In this case, the attackers singled out Bhaghvi amidst the chaos of beating her, the groom, and guests, revealing not mere opportunism but calculated contempt for her Hindu faith—a tactic to shatter families and erase Hindu presence. This abduction bid, thwarted only by brave bystanders, echoes countless documented instances where Hindu females bear the brunt of Muslim aggression, their religious identity marking them as prey in a system that enables such abductions and forced conversions. Pakistan's broader landscape of anti-Hindu pogroms—Muslim mobs attacking Hindu homes, shops, and temples—frames this Umerkot outrage as irrefutable communal violence rooted in religious animosity. The Hindu wedding party's mere existence provoked the assault, leaving the minority Hindus in perpetual dread. This convergence of targeted brutality against a Hindu wedding, the bride's abduction attempt, and systemic assault on the guests confirms the crime's religious motivations. This makes it a clear instance of an anti-Hindu hate crime. Therefore, this case is being added to the hate crime database of the Hinduphobia Tracker. Disclaimer: In this case, although reports confirm that multiple Hindu guests, along with the Hindu bride, faced attack by the Muslim group, the exact number of victims remains unspecified, with only the Hindu bride and her groom from the Sufi Faqeer community explicitly identified. As the Hinduphobia Tracker records crimes committed against Hindus by non-Hindus, and the total number of Hindu guests has not been detailed, the victim count stands at '1', referring solely to the Hindu bride. This is a conservative estimate recorded for the purpose of documentation only. Even though the Hindu bride married a man from the Sufi Faqeer community, the assault on the Hindu wedding procession stemmed directly from anti-Hindu animosity. The Muslim perpetrators targeted the Hindu bride for abduction and assaulted the Hindu guests purely due to their religious identity, marking this as a clear instance of anti-Hindu hate crime.