A minor Sikh girl was kidnapped and married to a Muslim in Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province... Read More

AMRITSAR: A minor Sikh girl was kidnapped and married to a Muslim in Buner district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan and forced to embrace Islam. Priya Kaur (17), a resident of Ghorghast village, was reportedly abducted and forcibly married to one Wajid Ali from the majority Muslim community in the region.

Acting on the complaint of Priya’s family, police arrested Wajid and the girl was sent to ‘darul aman’ (house of protection), said Hira Singh, Karachi-based advocate, to TOI on Friday. He also said the administration had constituted an investigation committee to probe the allegations of the girl’s parents.

Pakistani media had quoted Mohinder Lal, uncle of Priya, as saying, “The Muslims took out a big rally where they talked of Jihad against us if the girl was returned.”

Hira said Priya was brought to court where she said that she wanted to go back to her parents. He said if the girl gives a statement before the court that she had neither accepted Islam nor wilfully married Wajid, then the court could help her. “But the major question is whether the local Muslim society will let her do so. Under those circumstances, the only way for her family’s survival is to migrate to India,” he said.

Peshawar-based human rights activist Gurpal Singh said that whenever a report of a minority girl embracing Islam has surfaced, Muslims have come out in big numbers to support them. He alleged that sometimes it becomes difficult to bring back such girls to their parents’ homes. He said this is the reason why parents did not send their daughters to school, so that they remained safe within the four walls of their house. He also said that he had led a fact-finding delegation to the area on the instruction of management of Gurdwara Bhai Joga Singh, Peshawar.

Member of Pakistan national assembly and a Hindu leader, Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, said that forced conversions were not being curbed in the country as such incidents surfaced periodically. He said minority communities had brought a forced conversion bill which was even unanimously passed by the Sindh assembly, but in January this year, governor Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui returned the bill on the advice of chief minister Syed Murad Ali Shah.

