Hindu minor girl abducted, converted and married off to a Muslim man in Pakistan

Case ID : aa4b08f | Location : Sanghar, Sindh, Pakistan | Date of Incident : Sun, 4 May, 2025

Case ID : aa4b08f

Sanghar, Sindh, Pakistan

4 May, 2025

Hindu minor girl abducted, converted and married off to a Muslim man in Pakistan

Predatory Proselytisation

Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination

Conversion of minor

Pattern of targeting Hindus

Case Summary

In Bharo village, Sanghar district of Sindh, Pakistan, a Hindu minor girl named Sami was abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. Following her conversion, she was pushed into a marriage with a Muslim man named Gulshair. The incident is yet another grim example of the ongoing pattern of targeted abductions and coercive conversions of Hindu girls in Pakistan, particularly minors, underscoring the broader reality of relentless persecution faced by the Hindu minority. This community continues to endure systemic discrimination, violence, and forced conversions, with women and young girls being especially vulnerable to abduction, forced conversion to Islam, and marriage to Muslim men, often without any legal protection or recourse. Hindu temples are routinely vandalised or destroyed, and entire communities face deep 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 has been added to the tracker under the primary category of: - Predatory Proselytisation. Within it, the sub-category selected is: - Proselytisation by grooming, brainwashing, manipulation or subtle indoctrination with the tertiary category being: - Pattern of targeting Hindus and Conversion of minor. 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. The abduction of Sami, a Hindu minor girl in Sindh, by a Muslim man named Gulshair is classified as a hate crime because it involves the deliberate targeting of a minor based on her religious identity. The perpetrator's motive, coercive conversion to Islam and forced marriage, reflects a pattern in which Hindu minors, particularly girls, are singled out by non-Hindu perpetrators for religious conversion and exploitation. Such acts are not isolated but part of a broader phenomenon in Sindh and other regions, where Hindu girls are systematically abducted, groomed, and forced into religious conversion and marriage, often under threat or actual violence. The targeting is not random but is rooted in the victim’s Hindu faith, making the crime inherently religiously motivated. The victim is a minor, indicating a lack of consent and a genuine change of conscience. 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 mature, making them more vulnerable. This case demonstrates a calculated strategy of targeting those who are less able to resist or understand the long-term implications of conversion, making it a significant case of religious-motivated hate crime. This incident is emblematic of a longstanding and deeply entrenched pattern of persecution faced by Hindu minorities in Pakistan. This incident, involving the coercive conversion and forced marriage of a Hindu minor by an Islamist perpetrator, mirrors the widespread and well-documented practices of targeted violence, abductions, and forced conversions that have afflicted the Hindu community across various regions of the country. Reports and human rights documentation consistently highlight how Hindu girls are especially vulnerable to such attacks, often with little to no intervention from authorities, and how these crimes are frequently facilitated or ignored by local institutions, including the police.