A horrific murder in Sindh leads Pakistani politicians and India to call for a more effective protection of the Hindu minority.
by Massimo Introvigne
One of the most horrific murders in recent Pakistani history was perpetrated on December 28 in Sinjhoro, in the Sanghar area of Sindh.
Daya (also spelled Daiya) Bheel, a Hindu widow and the mother of five children, went missing in the morning. Her body was found in the evening in a mustard field outside Dipti village. The horror shocked even the police officers and the medical examiner, who determined that Bheel had been raped and tortured by removing large portions of skin from her body and cutting off her breasts. Finally, she had been beheaded.
Evidence attests that more than one perpetrator was responsible for the crime. The police created a “special team” on December 29 to investigate the murder.
Although no suspect has been arrested at the time of this writing, the local police has qualified the case as “terrorism,” confirming the strong suspicion by the local Hindu community that this is a hate crime and the fruit of sectarian tensions between the Muslim majority and the discriminated Hindu minority.
This is also the opinion of the Pakistan Hindu Council, which issued a statement on the case. Representatives of different Hindu communities in Sindh attended the woman’s funeral.
Krishna Kumari, the senator of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) from Tharparkar, Sindh, and Pakistan’s first female Hindu senator, visited Bheel’s relatives and the local police, calling for justice and a more effective protection of the Hindu minority.
The Foreign Ministry of India stated that, although they “do not have specific details on the case, we have reiterated that Pakistan should protect its minorities along with their safety, security and well-being, which is their responsibility.”
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
