Pak media slams government for making 'hounded' Hindus' lives 'living hell in country'

Islamabad, Aug 11 (ANI): As religious minorities in Pakistan have been made to feel insecure, and are given no help or protection by the country's government, many are left with no option but to reluctantly leave the nation, an editorial in a Pakistani daily has said.

According to an editorial in The Express Tribune, Hindu girls in Sindh are being abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and then are being married off to Muslim men, while in Balochistan, several Hindus are leaving their ancestral homes, sometimes moving to India or going to large urban cities like Karachi and Quetta because of the threats and difficulties they face in their day-to-day life.

Interior Minister of Pakistan, Rehman Malik, reportedly sparked controversy after he claimed that India was carrying out a conspiracy by issuing over 250 visas to Hindus, after some 60 Hindus were believed to have migrated to India from Jacobabad district of Sindh.

As a matter of fact, the Hindus were actually followers of the Maharaj from Jacobabad, who were leaving for a religious pilgrimage to India with him, and their visas were actually issued by the Indian High Commission, it said.

However, some of the Hindus at the Wagah border revealed that their lives had been turned into a living hell because of insecurity issues, and although they were travelling to India for a religious pilgrimage, they might decide to stay on there if they found it convivial, the editorial said.

According to another editorial in the Daily Times, the increasing trend of complaints by Hindu traders and families that their shops are looted, houses ransacked, women forcibly converted to Islam and kidnappings taking place for ransom, painted a sorry picture of the troubles faced religious minority communities in Pakistan.

Malik's insensitive and thoughtless remarks may just have made things even worse for Hindus in Pakistan, as the suspicion with which they were viewed till now, will only increase, for their loyalty to the country had been questioned, and the Pakistani society should ponder over its religious prejudice and violence against the religious minorities, the Express Tribune editorial concluded. (ANI)