Minor Hindu girl abducted, converted to Islam and married off to an elderly Muslim man

Case ID : 5954ac4 | Location : Sindh, Pakistan | Date of Incident : Tue, 10 September, 2024
Case ID : 5954ac4
location Sindh, Pakistan
date 10 September, 2024
Minor Hindu girl abducted, converted to Islam and married off to an elderly Muslim man
Predatory Proselytisation
Harassment, threats, coercion for conversion
Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination
Conversion of minor

Case Summary

A minor Hindu girl in Pakistan's Sindh province was abducted, converted, and married off to an elderly Muslim man. According to Shiva Faqir Kaachi, the head of the Pakistan Darawar Ittehad Organisation, the 16 year old girl was abducted from a village in Hunguru and married off to an elderly Muslim man after converting her to Islam. The girl was taken to an Islamic Seminary and married off. The family of the victim approached the authorities for help but after receiving none, they started to search for her and found her at the Seminary. When the parents requested to meet their daughter, their request was denied and the Islamic Cleric dispelled the victim's parents. Kaachi stated, "The girl was taken to a seminary near the Samura area and married off. When the parents went to the seminary on Thursday to see her, the cleric refused to let them in. It has now become a regular occurrence for Hindu families to see their young daughters and sisters forcibly taken away and converted to be married off to Muslim men in these places."

Why it is Hate Crime ?

This case has been added to the tracker under the prime category of- Predatory proselytisation. Under this, two sub-categories have been selected, based on case details. The first is- Harassment, threat and 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. The second sub-category is- Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination, and within this, the tertiary category named- Conversion of minor, has also been selected. Religious brainwashing essentially means the often subtle and forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up their religious beliefs to accept contrasting regimented ideas. Religious grooming or brainwashing also involves propaganda and manipulation. It involves the systematic effort, driven by religious malice and indoctrination, to persuade “non-believers’ to accept allegiance, command, or doctrine to and of a contrasting faith. Cases of such grooming or brainwashing are far more nuanced than direct threats, coercion, inducement and violence. In such cases, it is often seen that there is repeated, subtle and continual manipulation of the victim to induce disaffection towards their own faith and acceptance of the contrasting faith of the perpetrator. While subtle indoctrination is widely acknowledged as predatory, an element which is often understated in such conversions or the attempts of such conversion is the role of loyalty and trust which might develop between the perpetrator and the victim. Fiduciary relationships are often abused to affect such religious conversion. For example, an educator transmitting religious doctrine of a competing faith to a Hindu student. The Hindu student is likely to accept what the teacher is transmitting owing to existence of the fiduciary relationship. The exploitation of the fiduciary relationship to religiously indoctrinate victims would also be included in this category. Since the underlying animosity towards the victim’s faith forms the basis of predatory proselytization, such cases are considered religiously motivated hate crimes. In this instance, 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 Hindu victim was a minor which 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 particularly vulnerable to manipulation since they are still developing emotionally, cognitively, and socially. Their brains are not fully matured, making them more able to influence and less capable of critically evaluating information. Here, the perpetrator exploited this vulnerability of the victim for the explicit purpose of conversion. 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. Disclaimer: Based on the case details, it is noted that multiple individuals were involved in the abduction and forced conversion of the minor Hindu victim. However, since the exact number of perpetrators has not been explicitly stated, the database records the primary perpetrator as the elderly Muslim man who forcibly married the minor victim. Consequently, the perpetrator count has been documented as one for consistency in reporting.

Victim Details

Total Victim

1

Deceased

0


Gender

  • Male 0
  • Female 1
  • Third Gender 0
  • Unknown 0

Caste

  • SC/ST 0
  • OBC 0
  • General 0
  • Unknown 1

Age Group

  • Minor 1
  • Adult 0
  • Senior Citizen 0
  • Unknown 0
Case Status Background
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Case Status


Complaint not filed

Case Status Background
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Perpetrators Details

Perpetrators


Muslim Extremists

Perpetrators Range


One Person

Perpetrators Gender


male

Case Details SVG
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