In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the rights of Hindus and other religious minorities are muzzled by the Islamists. In the Muslim majority country, Hindu, Sikh and Christian girls are regularly abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and married off to their Jihadist abductor. These conversions take place with tacit support of the government and courts and all it takes to validate this fraud is a forced ‘confession’ video of the Hindu victims.
There has been a substantial rise in cases of abduction and forced conversion of Hindu and other non-Muslim girls to Islam in the recent years. As per an estimate by the Movement for Solidarity and Peace (MSP), as many as 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls, aged between 12 to 25 years, are abducted annually in Pakistan. In most cases, the police refuse to act against the perpetrators or is found to be helping the Islamists.
MSP’s 2014 study traced numerous cases wherein Hindu and other non-Muslim girls, mostly underage, were kidnapped, subjected to physical and mental torture, forced to convert to Islam, marry their abductor or older Muslim men, and when the victim’s family would approach court, the girls would be threatened with murder of their parents if they testified against her oppressors.
Abductions, forced conversion to Islam, killings and a complicit ‘system’: The continued struggle of Pakistani Hindus to save their identity and life
In the last decade, nothing has changed in the failed state of Pakistan, their economy remains in shambles, their army continues to dominate and persecute Pashtuns and Baloch. Besides inflation, hatred for Hindus and IMF loans are the only two things that never go down in Pakistan.
As per an October 2024 report by human rights group Jubilee Campaign, the modus operandi of perpetrators of such crimes rarely deviates from the following pattern: an adult Muslim man (in some cases married with children of their own) identifies a young Christian or Hindu girl (often a neighbour or acquaintance) that he wishes to make his wife. The perpetrator exploits Sharia legal loopholes; the climate of police disinclination to investigate offenses against faith minorities; and the willingness of some radical Muslim leaders and entities to fabricate documentation regarding the victim’s age, religious affiliation, and marital status.
In May 2023, a Christian girl named Muskan was kidnapped at gunpoint by Mohammad Adnan and his father, after which the minor was forced to convert to Islam. The minor was declared Adnan’s ‘wife’. Muskan was repeatedly subjected to sexual abuse. In June, 14-year-old Muskan Liyaqat of Muridke in Punjab’s Sheikhpura district escaped from captivity after nearly two years. After escaping captivity, Muskan said that she was beaten with an iron rod and insulting words were used for Christians. She had a miscarriage after torture during forced pregnancy.
As per a Jubilee Campaign report, in the case of the forced conversion and marriage of a Christian girl named Shifa, the police officer told the 14-year-old victim’s father, “Your daughter will never return to you, inshallah [if Allah wills].” During court hearing, her 48-year-old Muslim ‘husband’ Syed Shabbar Ali Gillani, presented fake conversion and marriage documents to claim that Shifa was 18-years-old even though she was 14. Shifa was abducted by her neighbour Najma Liaquat.
In February 2023, a 17-year-old Hindu girl in Pakistan’s Sindh was kidnappedv and converted to Islam. The minor is a resident of Naukot, Mirpur Khas district in Sindh province in Pakistan. According to her family, the girl was kidnapped on February 15 from Naukot market where she had gone with her younger brother to purchase vegetables. Her younger brother said the girl was being taunted by one Rouf, a resident of Umerkot and his two friends. On 15th February 2023, when the siblings reached Naukot market, Rouf along with his friends forcefully took the girl away with them. The police registered FIR with entries in the records of missing persons and did not name the perpetrators.
Mirpur Khas is notorious for the big conversion rackets operating there. Reports say that not only Hindu girls but entire families are targeted for forced conversions and then kept in mosque-cum-training centres to properly ‘Islamise’ them. In May 2023, around 50 Hindus were converted to Islam and were subjected to four months Islamic training. In this event organised by an Islamic outfit, Mohammad Samroz Khan, son of Minister of Religious Affairs and Senator Mohammad Talha Mahmood, was invited as the chief guest in this program. This program was organised in a madrasa in Baitul Imam New Muslim Colony.
In June 2025, four Hindu siblings, Jiya (22), Diya (20), Disha (16) and Ganesh Kumar (14) were kidnapped from Shahdadpur in Sindh. Two days after their kidnapping, an online video showed the siblings praying namaz with their new names. Notably, Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are the centres of forced conversions to Islam with individuals and Islamists groups functioning with the purpose of bringing in more and more convert to Islam.
In 2024 alone, rights groups say that over a dozen cases of forced conversion have been reported in Pakistan. Not to forget, most cases of forced Islamic conversion in Pakistan go unreported.
In March 2025, Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) released its report on the human rights situation in the country. The report, “Under Siege: Freedom of Religion or Belief in 2023/24,” gave a dark account of increasing violence, forced conversions, and institutionalised discrimination against Pakistan’s Hindus, particularly in Sindh province.
Violence against Hindus in Pakistan includes mob violence, temple desecration, targeted kidnappings and forced conversion of Hindu girls. The report highlights how the judicial process in Pakistan, extremist elements, and inaction of government officials have placed Hindus in a seriously vulnerable position with little chance of justice.
Sindh’s Ghotki, Umerkot, and Tharparkar are Hindu abduction hubs. Most of the victims are underage girls who are abducted, coerced into conversion to Islam, and wedded to Muslim men in the guise of “voluntary conversions.”
Islamic Jihadist clerics like Mian Abdul Haq (Mian Mithu) play a crucial role in such forced conversions. The report indicated that his seminary, Dargah Bharchundi Sharif in Ghotki, is repeatedly used for the forced conversion of abducted Hindu girls.
One of the cases that were reported by international media included two Hindu sisters, Reena and Raveena, who were kidnapped in Sindh. Their parents begged the court to return them, but the judge legalised their forced marriage. Interestingly, the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act has 18 as the minimum age for marriage, but the judge categorically ignored the law. HRCP noted that now majority of the Hindu families have stopped sending their daughters to school out of fear of abduction.
In the year 2022 alone, 124 including 81 Hindu women forcefully converted to Islam with 58% of them being minors. A Human Rights Observer 2023 fact sheet revealed 81 Hindu, 42 Christian and one Sikh girl were forcibly converted to Islam. The fact sheet revealed that 23 per cent of girls were below 14 years of age, 36 per cent of them were between the age of 14 and 18 years, and only 12 per cent of the victims were adults, while the age of 28 per cent of the victims was not reported.
Notably, besides being forced to convert to Islam, Hindus in Pakistan are subjected to religious discrimination, humiliation and killings over the false accusations of ‘blasphemy’, by Islamists. Hatred against Hindus is indoctrinated in educational institutes in the country.
In August 2025, Pakistan’s own National Commission on the Rights of the Child (NCRC) exposed the serious and long-standing discrimination faced by children from minority religions, especially Christians and Hindus in the country.
With state inaction rather complicity, Islamists in Pakistan are emboldened to carry out forced conversions. Under the rule of Madrassa-bred jihadist Asim Munir, the de facto ruler of Pakistan who often expresses his hatred for Hindus, the hostile neighbour is witnessing increased radicalisation. Given the world’s convenient silence on the plight of Pakistani Hindus, who are either forced to abandon their religion or flee to India, continue struggle to exist and preserve their religious identity from third-fourth generation Muslim converts whose own ancestors were Hindus.
