New Delhi: Kashmiri activist Sushil Pandit on Saturday criticised Pakistan over reports of snatching of girls for debt repayment and said that the practice punishes the Hindu community for being a minority in a Muslim-majority country.
“Hindus in Pakistan are paying the price of becoming the minority. It is not just the issue of human rights violation, what they are facing is genocide. At this rate, they will not be able to find even one. It is a warning to all of us here in India,” Pandit told ANI.
Pandit said he was ashamed that the Centre is not taking responsibility for the care of Hindus living in a place which was India’s not long ago.
In the year 2005, a girl called Jeevti who was just 14 was taken away from her family in the night to be married off to a man who says her family owed him USD 1,000 in Pakistan.
Her mother, Ameri Kashi Kohli, is sure that her daughter paid the price for a never-ending debt.
As per reports, Hindu women in southern Pakistan are frequently offered by parents as payment for a debt or to settle disputes.
According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, more than two million Pakistanis live as “modern slaves”.
An estimated 1,000 young Christian and Hindu girls, most of them underage and impoverished, are taken from their homes each year, converted to Islam and married, said a report by the South Asia Partnership organization.
ANI