New York, June 6, 2016: A Pakistani Hindu doctor named Dr. Dileep Luhano was kidnapped 4 years ago by Taliban from his clinic at Metrowel Karachi, Pakistan.
Taliban asked the family to pay up ransom in millions of Pakistani Rupees and threatened the family that in case they failed to pay the ransom then they will chop his finger on Eid and send it to them. It is now 2016, and the doctor Dileep Luhano has not returned.
Will he ever return? No one knows, because Dr. Dileep was not the son of some ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and also came from a minority community forever under the cloud of disgust, except, of course, on Diwali and Holi on which Pakistani politicians do cosmetic greetings.
There are several cases like that, many Hindu men, doctors, students, traders, workers and labourers suffer daily persecution in Pakistan with their Muslim colleagues refusing to treat them at par with them. There are cases where Hindu men are forced to fast during Ramazan because of the threatening attitude of their colleagues. Hindu students often get degraded by fellow students and teachers alike.
There are cases of sexual violence against minor Hindu boys as well.
In fact, such is the persecution of Hindu men that even talking to Muslim girls can lead to murders as happened in the case of Himraj who used to talk to a Muslim girl. When the brothers of the Muslim girl found out, they kidnapped the man and tortured him to death throwing his body into the Kabul river at Noshera cantt KPK.
But the worse came when the family tried to locate the 20-year old and were threatened that they too will be killed if they tried to find out the dead body of their son.
Sanjay Gangwani and Dewan Sachal (PTI minority president Sindh) were asked for help and later the killers, Faiz Alam and Junaid, were arrested who confessed that they killed the man because they could not see him talking to their sister.
Such cases of persecution against Hindu men are many; who does not remember the case of a Hindu boy Sunil who was converted by Maulana Mufti Muhammad Aqmal in the year 2012 on a special live Ramzan show on ARY Digital channel, hosted by Maya Khan? Sunil was one of the many among the group who were present but amidst much cheering of the audience, he was made a Muslim and became Muhammad Abdullah.
After becoming Muhammad Abdullah he stopped eating and celebrating Hindu festivals like Raksha Bandhan with his Hindu family as he had converted.
Another such case was reported by BBC Urdu on 19 June 2015, in which a minor Hindu boy (age 15-years) was forced to convert to Islam after having been abducted near his own home and forcibly taken to a local, but politically, connected religious leader.
As per the BBC report, Pawan Kumar who is the son of Gopal Daas, based in Tando Allah Yaar, Sindh District, was out to play cricket with a friend of his on 15 June 2015. That day he did not return.
The worried family tried contacting on phone but found that it was switched off. But they finally received a phone from the crying boy saying that he has been kidnapped and he also pleaded them to help him. The Hindu boy’s family contacted police where they came face to face with the reality, their minor boy was in the custody of Mir Ayub Jaan Sirhandi, based in Umerkot Samaro in Sindh.
They expected the worst and that they came face to face the next day, Pawan has been converted to Islam and his conversion news was there, in front of them, on television.
Once converted to Islam one cannot go back to his old faith or else the person, his family, and even his entire community can become a target of hate attacks.
The fact that minor boys are also game for conversion and the Pakistani society is comfortable with it, shows the extent to which the Hindu men and boys suffer persecution in the nation. Yet, their persecution rarely becomes a talking point.
The problems faced by Hindu men are more; they are also the sole breadwinners in many cases. Like in the case of Hindu brothers (year 2010) who lived in the village of Nikki Pindi:
Hans Raj, Kans Raj, Meena/Kartar and Sardari Lal along with his nephews and sons worked at a small restaurant in Karachi, but they were forced to choose between their work or religion because the owner complained that after employing them, his sale was dropping as the Muslims did not want to buy anything made by Hindu hands.
4 Hindus of the Tapiala village also were forced to change their religion because they were being discriminated against by majority Muslim employers who did not want to hire Hindus. Land grabbing is another serious issue for which Hindus are forced to change their religion.
In Pakistan, there is persecution of Hindu men even when they are dead like it happened in the case of Bhoro Bheel, whose dead body was dug out and thrown out by extremists while a crowd cheered on.
The question is, whether the Pakistani Hindu men will ever be heard?
