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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

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