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Mohandas and Bharti<br />
Naraindas, who were alleged<br />
to have been abducted,<br />
were also present at the<br />
press conference. They<br />
narrated their ordeal after<br />
their daughters went<br />
missing. They said that the<br />
girls had been abducted,<br />
forced to convert to Islam<br />
and marry Muslim men.<br />
They complained that the<br />
police had extended to them<br />
no help while the<br />
subordinate judiciary did not<br />
appear helpful either. They<br />
said the culprits were wellarmed<br />
and enjoyed the<br />
support of influential<br />
religious and political<br />
personalities. HRCP activists<br />
said that there could be no<br />
objection if anyone<br />
embraced Islam of their own<br />
accord, but such a person<br />
should be at liberty to meet<br />
his family and the fact that<br />
the girls could not do that<br />
supported the view that they<br />
had not acted voluntarily.<br />
Pakistan Hindu Council<br />
then moved a petition in the<br />
Supreme Court for the<br />
recovery of three Hindu<br />
women. Besides Rinkle, the<br />
other two women were Dr<br />
Lata Kumari from Jacobabad<br />
and Asha Mohandas from<br />
Larkana. Relatives said that<br />
the young women had been<br />
kidnapped, forcibly<br />
converted and married to<br />
Muslim men against their<br />
will.<br />
On March 12, Rinkle<br />
Kumari appeared at a press<br />
Putting on a show<br />
In July, broadcasting of a<br />
Pakistani Hindu boy’s conversion to<br />
Islam live on television during a primetime<br />
chat show led to criticism that the<br />
country’s electronic media would go<br />
to any length to spice things up<br />
without considering ethical<br />
implications or appropriateness of its<br />
programming. The television<br />
programme showed a cleric leading<br />
the Hindu boy through a live<br />
conversion to Islam, with audience<br />
joining in to suggest Muslim names for<br />
the new convert. He was renamed<br />
Muhammad Abdullah by consensus.<br />
Although there were no suggestions<br />
that the boy had converted against<br />
his free will, a newspaper editorial<br />
slammed the programme for<br />
“dragging an intensely personal and<br />
spiritual experience into public view”,<br />
as others cautioned against turning<br />
religion into mass entertainment. Civil<br />
society also said that the channel had<br />
obviously not stopped to consider the<br />
message the broadcast would send<br />
to the religious minorities in Pakistan<br />
or how the Muslim population would<br />
feel if the conversion was from Islam<br />
and not to it.”The joy with which the<br />
conversion was greeted, and the<br />
congratulations that followed, sent a<br />
clear signal that other religions don’t<br />
enjoy the same status in Pakistan as<br />
Islam does… In a country where<br />
minorities are already treated as<br />
second-class citizens in many ways,<br />
this served to marginalise them even<br />
further,” one newspaper editorial<br />
concluded.<br />
109<br />
State of Human Rights in 2012