Under the shadow of guns, Hindu girl Aarti forced to become Mehwish

UNCERTAIN FUTURE: Hindu girls in Pakistan live in daily fear.

Rinkle Kumari was sobbing before the supreme court of Pakistan that she wants to go with her parents, but still she was returned to her rapist captors in Pakistan, not to her parents--against her wish. Whether the Hindu girl wanted it or not, she was forced to become Faryal Shah

Five years later, after at least 1,500 such cases of abductions at gunpoint and forced conversions of Hindu girls, mostly minors, yet another case: Aarti Kumari Sharma, 20, is now Mehwish. But she has not been produced in court even once since her abduction, forced conversion and marriage within 24 hours nearly five months back, her uncle Kishore Kumar told Hinglaj Mata News. Aarti Sharma, a school teacher, was abducted while she was returning home after school in Khairpur on Saturday, September 9, last year.

The very next day, a Sunday, Maulvi Mama Asadullah of the Jamiya Masjid and Al Jamiya Al Islamiya Aizazul Uloom religious seminary in Sukkur issued the conversion certificate of Aarti Sharma, who became Mehwish. Her "legal" husband, whom she never met before, is Ameer Bakhsh, 25, son of Allah Bachayo ("Allah Save") Wassan. The alleged abductor is resident of Mohalla Ali Abad Wassan in Ranipur while Aarti Sharma parents live in Hindu Mohalla, Gambat-- about 12 miles away.

The armed abductors responsible for the forced conversion and marriage of the Hindu girl were said to be loyalists of Manzoor Wassan, who is a government minister in Sindh province and belongs to the Pakistan People's party of former president Asif Ali Zardari.

"Not a single Hindu girl who was abducted at gunpoint ever returned home," Kishore Kumar Sharma, uncle of  Aarti Sharma told this scribe on phone from Houston Wednesday. He said if the girl says she wants to go with her parents she is sent to darul Amaan where she is tortured and brainwashed and in subsequent hearings tell the judge they converted to Islam and married on their free volition.

Kishore Sharma said only once the girl was allowed to see her parents for four brief minutes in a meeting arranged by the PPP minister, Wassan. When the girl was brought by hordes of armed escorts. "The meeting took place at the clinic of a Wassan doctor. The doctor had arranged lots of fruits and cake, but the girls parents told him they were not there to eat something (but to take back their daughter)." He said the girls parents could barely say hello hi to her when the abductor came and took her away. “On the table there was a microphone and the parents believe someone in the adjoining room could listen to what the daughter and her parents talked were about during those four minutes.”

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 25 Hindu girls are converted in Sindh every month. However, most of the cases go unreported as most Hindus are extremely poor to seek legal recourse. On Facebook one can see educated Hindus lamenting over their plight in Pakistan.  

"No hearing has taken place so far in the Sukkur bench of the Sindh High Court. Last hearing was scheduled for October 16 but did not take place due to the death of a senior lawyer," Sharma said. He said the family is fast losing hope that the girl will ever be reunited with her parnets but wants to keep on struggling to save other Hindu girls from such tragedies.

Legal experts tend to look at the whole issue of forced conversions in a holistic way. A senior UK educated barrister at law and additional advocate general of Sindh, Mustafa Mahesar says it is not only minorities who are suffering. This country is denying rights to everyone, male, female, transgender, Sindhi, Baloch, Pakhtun, Punjabi, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Shia, Sunni, Ahmadi. Everyone,” Mahesar said, adding, Look at (ousted premier) Nawaz Sharif. He is mazloom (oppressed). The establishment’s mindset is so vicious that it cannot tolerate anyone.” Mahesar promised to talk to minister Wassan to seek justice for aarti Sharma.

AFB Directors Carl Clemens (Left) and Najeeb Khan
appeal to USCIRF to save Aarti Sharma. Picture Courtesy
Captain (Rtd) Dipesh Chatterjee

AFB appeals to USCIRF to intervene

Meanwhile, the American Friends of Balochistan, a DC-based non-profit that crusades for the defending rights of Baloch people of Balochistan and other minorities reeling under Pakistan’s state terrorism has sought international intervention to save the Hindu and Christian girls from daily wholesale rape. The AFB contacted the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to seek justice for Aarti Sharma.

In separate emails to the USCIRF, AFB directors Najeeb Khan and Carl Clemens I am a member of the American Friends of Balochistan (AFB) - an advocacy group for the rights of exploited minorities in southern and south-western Pakistan-- said of the abduction, forced religious conversion and 'marriage' of a minority Hindu girl in Pakistan [see here] has become a regular feature of Pakistani society now, where Hindu girls are kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man at gunpoint.

They urged international agencies to recognize this continuing barbarism and pick up a single case to fight for the freedom of Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan. They told the USCIRF Aarti Sharma’s uncle met with Congressman Pete Olson recently. “Previous efforts to wake up the conscience of Pakistan's own civil society have failed. Therefore, we are forced to focus on international intervention,” said Clemens. “Abduction of religious minorities’ women and young girls, their forced religious conversion and marriages with old Muslim men. Aarti Sharma has been held as a sex slave in Pakistan [see here] which  needs your attention. I request you a to recognize this enduring savagery and rescue this poor Hindu girl from the Pakistani zealots.

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