It was barely 4 am when 19-year-old Rinkal Kumari disappeared from her home in a small village in Pakistan's southern Sindh province. When her parents awoke they found only her slippers and a scarf outside the door. A few hours later her father got a call telling him his daughter, a Hindu, had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim boy. Only days later, Seema Bibi, a Christian woman in the province of Punjab, was kidnapped along with her four children after her husband couldn't repay a loan to a large landlord. Within hours, her husband was told his wife had converted to Islam and wouldn't be coming home. Seema Bibi escaped, fled the village and has gone underground with her husband and children. Hindu and Christian representatives say forced conversions to Islam have become the latest weapon of Islamic extremists in what they call a growing campaign against Pakistan's religious minorities, on top of assassinations and mob intimidation of houses of worship. The groups are increasingly wondering if they still have a place in Pakistan. "It is a conspiracy that Hindus and Christians and other minorities should leave Pakistan," says Amar Lal, the lawyer representing Kumari in the Supreme Court. "As a minority, we feel more and more insecure. It is getting worse day by day." In the last four months, Lal said, 51 Hindu girls have been forcibly converted to Islam in southern Sindh province, where most of Pakistan's minority Hindu population lives. After Kumari disappeared from her home on Feb 24, Azra Fazal Pachuho, a lawmaker and the sister of Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, told Parliament that Hindus in southern Sindh were under attack by Islamic extremists.
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