There, Ms. Kumari was welcomed by Mr. Mitho’s elderly brother, Mian Shaman — the same cleric who had converted her three days earlier — who led her into the towering shrine. When she emerged, now wearing a black veil, gunmen unleashed volleys of celebratory Kalashnikov fire into the air and shouted “God is calling you!”

Hindu leaders, enraged, viewed the images as a crass provocation. “If the couple was really in love, then why this fanfare of guns?” said Amarnath Motumal, a Hindu lawyer and human rights activist in Karachi. “It clearly shows they are trying to embarrass the Hindu community and are bent on taking our girls forcefully.”

Ms. Kumari’s parents pursued the case through the courts, claiming that their daughter had been abducted by a Muslim supremacist, and that the police and judiciary were biased against them because they came from a minority background.

Image Sindh, where Ghotki is located, is known for tolerance. Credit... The New York Times

“Mian Mitho is a terrorist and a thug. He takes the girls, and keeps them in his home for sexual purposes,” said Ms. Kumari’s father, Nand Lal, a government schoolteacher, noting that Mr. Mitho’s armed guards had escorted his daughter to court appearances and news conferences. His wife, Sulachany Devi, issued an anguished appeal. “Rinkel was my blood, and she remains my blood. All I want is for her to return home,” she said.

Mr. Mitho, in an interview, denied the allegations against him. “I am merely protecting her human rights,” he said. And at the Sufi shrine in Ghotki district, his brother, the cleric who converted Ms. Kumari, was equally unapologetic.

“We are saving them from the fires of hell,” said Mian Shaman, a frail man in his 70s with a mottled complexion and a wavering voice. “We consider they are born again, and the sins of their previous life are washed away.”