Islamabad: A Pakistani high court on Thursday declared that the two Hindu teenage sisters were not forcibly converted from Hinduism to Islam, and permitted them to live with their spouses, according to a media report. The two girls, Raveena (13) and Reena (15), and their spouses petitioned the Islamabad High Court on March 25 against alleged harassment by police days after their father and brother alleged that the girls were underage, abducted, forced into changing their religion, and then married off to Muslim men.
In their plea, the girls claimed that they belong to a Hindu family of Ghotki, Sindh but converted willfully as they were impressed by Islamic teaching, Dawn reported. The counsel for the girls’ parents, however, asserted that the case pertained to forced conversion. Chief Justice Athar Minallah constituted a five-member commission to probe whether the conversion of the Hindu sisters to Islam was forced or otherwise.
The commission probed the matter and concluded that it was not a forced conversion, the report said. The secretary interior, Azam Suleman, apprised the high court about the findings of the commission, and told the court that as per the commission’s opinion, it was a facilitated conversion, the report said. Rehman pointed out in court that “there is no law in Pakistan against forced conversions” and sought a court decree in this regard.
The teenage sisters were allegedly kidnapped by a group of “influential” men from their home in Ghotki district in Sindh on the eve of Holi. Soon after the kidnapping, a video went viral in which a cleric was purportedly shown soleminising the Nikah (marriage) of the two girls, triggering a nationwide outrage. Prime Minister Imran Khan also ordered probe to ascertain if the two girls were abducted and forcibly converted and married. A war of words broke out between India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Pakistan’s Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry over the reported abduction, forced conversion and underage marriages of the two Hindu teenagers
