18-Year-Old Hindu Girl Shot Dead in Pakistan for Resisting Forced Abduction

Another incident of forced abduction of a young Hindu girl occurred in Pakistan and this time they took away her life for resisting the criminals. Pooja Oad was an 18-year-old Hindu girl who was shot dead by Wahid Lashari in Rohi, Sukkur, Pakistan as she resisted his abduction attempt.

The minority Hindu community of Pakistan has been facing forced abductions of minor Hindu girls every year who are forcibly married off to their abductors and forcefully converted to Islam. This is not new for the minority Hindu community of Pakistan as thousands of such forced abductions, marriages, and conversions are reported every year. 

Young Hindu girls are some of the most marginalized groups of people in Pakistan and their voices are never heard in the mainstream media. Immediately after the abduction, Hindu girls are coerced into saying that they willingly fled their home and are willingly marrying the abductors and willingly converting to Islam. The Hindu girls are recorded on video making these statements under immense pressure on their very life. They see no other option but to succumb to such cunning oppression.

When the family of the Hindu girls seek justice, the coerced video is used as evidence in court cases to say that the girls willingly did what they were forced into. The Hindu girls are further brainwashed and kept in extreme fear for their lives after the forceful marriage to never open their mouths again to demand justice. 

Lawyers in Pakistan refuse to take up cases for the minority Hindu community for various systemic reasons. First, there is tremendous pressure created by the extremist forces to not allow anyone to step up to represent Hindus in court. Death threats and blasphemy accusations are hurled at whoever decides to help the minority Hindu community.

Hindus are also a very small minority and they are among the poorest in the country. Hindus in Pakistan do not have adequate wealth to take up big fights in courts or hire proper lawyers to represent them in court. Thus, the anti-Hindu elements prey on the impoverished Hindu community, which has been stripped of its Indigenous land and properties after the illegal and inhumane anti-Hindu partition in the late 1940s. 

Pooja resisted the same pattern of abduction and her fate was death. They shot her without any remorse for human life or basic humanity. Such barbarism has been systemic in Pakistani society where Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs are persecuted daily with alarming spikes in such cases happening almost daily. It is about time human rights organizations and the international community step up their responsibility in protecting these marginalized minorities.