New Delhi: Around 1,000 young women from Hindu, Christian, and Sikh communities, often underage, continue to be kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam each year, the latest report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has confirmed.
“There is a long history of abduction of women from religious minority communities in Pakistan and minor girls continue to be victims of religious violence and persecution,” it said.
On Monday, the Sikh community protested outside the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi against the abduction of a Sikh girl, daughter of Gurdwara Panja Sahib’s head granthi in Hassan Abdal city of Pakistan.
Local police in Pakistan are often accused of complicity in these cases or failure to investigate them properly. In the Sikh community itself, more than 55 such instances of abductions and forced conversions are said to have taken place in the past few months.
To help that Sikhs and to stop abduction of non-Muslim girls in Pakistan, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Monday had summoned a senior official of the Pakistan High Commission on the issue.
(Vinayak Barot)