Washington DC: November 30, 2014. (Ahmar MustikhanTwo Hindu girls aged 13 and 14 were abducted at gunpoint Thursday and then married to Muslim men, one of them 62 years old, in southeastern Sindh province in Pakistan.
Veerji Kolhi at the home of the two minor Hindu girls in Badin district who were abducted at gunpoint and converted to Islam by Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi.
Hindu girls Baby Mavi, 13 daughter of Venjho Kohli, and Baby Badal, 14, daughter of Shambo Kohli. The abduction took place in the dead of night at 3 am at village Rehmatullah Arain in Distract Badin. Mir Muhammad Arain, Khameeso Arain and Meero Dal allegedly entered their hut and abducted the two girls at gunpoint.
The All Pakistan Hindu Panchayat Committee has condemned the abductions and forced marriages.
A case with the police called the first information report (F.I.R.) was registered at police station Gulab Leghari. Police offical Abdul Rasheed Bhatti said police raided different places but were unable to free the Hindu girls from the custody of an Islamist leader Pir Ayub Jan Sarhandi.
On Friday the two abducted Hindu girls were presented at the Sindh High Court Hyderabad by abductor Mir Muhammad Arain. According to the petition filed by Arain’s lawyer, the two Hindu girls were “legally” married to Mir Muhammad Arain and Khameeso Arain on November 27 — the day they were abducted –and were converted to Islam at the home of Pir Sarhandi. The date of birth of one of the grooms Mir Muhammaad Arain is 62 years, according to court documents.
Sindhi human rights defender Veerji Kohli was at the home of the grieving parents. “The thing that hurts much is that a girl of only 13 age is abducted and has been forcibly married to a 62 year old person,” Kolhi said Sunday. “Think for a while what will be the situation of their poor and disadvantaged parents.”
Veerji Kolhi, who is a convener with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, himself was kidnapped some years ago for defending the voiceless Hindus.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan more than two dozen Hindu girls are forcibly converted to Islam each month. Hindus like Kolhis, Bheels, Megwars, who mostly work in the fields in southern Sindh, are specially targeted by the Islamists as they are on the lowest rungs of the social ladder
On Friday, the girls could not be presented before the judge for their statements so their parents went back without meeting them. According to the lawyer for the abductors, the two Hindu girls will be presented in the court for their statement on Monday.
In most cases, the abducted Hindu girls and girls from other minorities such as Christians are blackmailed and threatened that if they do not tell the judge they left their homes, converted to Islam and got married on their free will, their entire families will get killed.