EDITORIAL: A minority community legislator, Mahesh Kumar Hasija, moved a call attention notice in Monday’s session of the Sindh Assembly voicing concern over surging cases of underage Hindu girls’ forced conversions and marriages to Muslim men.
He urged the provincial government to address the matter and protect vulnerable individuals, particularly members of minority communities. Creditably for it, Sindh is the only province which has enacted a law criminalising marriage of girls under 18 years of age.
The provincial Home Minister, Zia-ul-Hassan Lanjar, told the House that during the last year 30 FIRs were registered in Karachi under that law, leading to the arrest of 40 people, and that all their cases were under trial in courts. It is unclear though whether these cases involved girls only in the flood affected areas, where many poor families had voluntarily given their minor girls in marriage to much older men in exchange for monetary relief.
However, MPA Hasija’s cause of concern was underage Hindu girls. According to various media reports, each year dozens if not hundreds of such girls are kidnapped by Muslim men for marriage after forced conversion. Such cases take place in several districts of Sindh where nearly 90 percent of this minority community lives. This has gone on allegedly under threat of violence to girls and their families with the active involvement of local clerics.
In fact, a while ago a prominent local religious leader was found playing a key role in enforced conversions of Hindu girls and subsequent marriages to Muslim men. Since most of the victims belong to poor families the police also tend to ignore their complaints, even justify them as ‘love marriages’. As the Home Minister while responding to the legislator’s notice had said, in some instances SHOs were involved in these cases and issued show-cause notices.
The minority community representatives seem to have a valid point in demanding legal mechanism for conversion so as to ascertain that it is an act of free will. The provincial government had tried to do that at first in 2016.
A bill to that effect was passed by the assembly but blocked from becoming a law by certain religious groups and political parties. Three years later another attempt at enacting a law criminalising forced religious conversions and marriages failed to get past the assembly. The environment since has become ever more unfavourable to such legislation.
Still, Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act, 2013, can and must be used to provide protection to underage girls from all vulnerable communities. Under it any act to promote, permit or failure to prevent child marriage is punishable with rigorous imprisonment that may extend to three years, and also be liable to fine. It needs to be strictly implemented to address minority communities’ genuine concerns.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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