Pakistan's atrocities against minorities: Amid soaring atrocities against minority communities in Pakistan, another case of brutality emerged on Wednesday, where a 40-year-old Bheel woman reportedly gang-raped and brutally murdered in Sindh province. According to Krishna Kumari, whose Twitter handle describes her as a Senator of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) From Tharparkar Sindh, the woman was identified as Daya Bheel (40), who was brutally murdered on Wednesday.
According to Research Gate, the Bheel community largely speak a mixture of different dialects of Rajasthani (mainly Marwari), Gujarati, and Sindhi – a mixture that some label as Bhilki. They are mainly concentrated in Khairpur district in upper Sindh, the districts of Mirpur Khas and Hyderabad in lower Sindh, and the Bahawalpur district in southern Punjab.
Body cut into several pieces
Kumari claimed that the woman was a widow and her body was found in a very vicious state. She claimed that the body of the victim was cut into several pieces, adding the accused had removed the flesh of the whole head.
Meanwhile, Jiyala Amar Lal Bheel, whose microblogging account describes her as the media coordinator of Senator Krishna Kumari and a member of PPP social media, claimed that the woman was disappeared from her agricultural land near the Sinjhoro region. According to Jiyala, her head was totally separated from the body and the flesh of the whole head had been cut off. As of now, the PPP media coordinator said that the police have taken note of the incident but did not reveal any details linked to the people involved in the brutal crime.
Indian External Affairs Ministry reacts to the incident
Reacting to the incident, Indian External Affairs Ministery's spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that Pakistan is responsible for the safety and security of minorities in their country. "We don't have any specific details on this report," he added.
Women from minorities live in fear as forced conversion, marriages continue in Pakistan
Interestingly, the horrific incident came on the same day when the International Forum for Rights and Society (IFFRAS) reported that the Muslim-dominated nation has increased forced conversions and marriages. According to the report, the incident of brutality has put the Hindu and Christian families in constant fear of their daughters being snatched away.
The report entitled "Conversion Without Consent" talks about an increase in violence against non-Muslim women while the state remains indifferent and the judicial system denies timely justice in most cases. The report examined 100 reported cases involving abductions, forced faith conversions, and forced and child marriage of girls and women from the Christian community across Pakistan, as per the IFFRAS report. The highest number of such cases are seen in the Punjab province with 86 per cent, 11 per cent in Sindh, 2 per cent in Islamabad, 1 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and none in Baluchistan.
Strong correlation between reports of forced conversion and child marriage
According to the Voice of Justice report, many cases are reported in Pakistan in which predominantly juvenile girls from religious minority communities are kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam, and married off to Muslim men, usually the very same perpetrators of their abductions. The report stated that there is a strong correlation between reports of forced conversion and child marriage. "The perpetrators mostly manipulate the law and justice system to get away with their crimes due to the absence of legislation which deals with forced faith conversions, and the lack of enforcement of existing domestic law; this remains a key impediment in preventing such harmful and inhumane practices," the report said.
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