She escaped from forced conversion and marriage after 14 months. She has now been abducted again.
by Marco Respinti
It looked like a rare, if partial, happy ending. One of the Hindu girls kidnapped and forcibly married to a Muslim man in Pakistan escaped and returned home. Unfortunately, she has now been kidnapped for the second time.
On January 31, 2022, Meena Kohli, a nineteen-year-old Hindu girl who had married a co-religionist only three days before, and her minor sister Rekha, who is 12, were both kidnapped at gunpoint from their father’s home in the village of Durlo Hingorjo in Khipro Tehsil, Sindh.
Their family and the Hindu community denounced the kidnappers, a Muslim man called Iqbal Bhambro and his father Mushtaq, to the local authorities and started organizing public protests.
On February 20, 2022, a video was sent to local media by the Bhambro family where Meena read a statement saying that she had willingly converted to Islam and married Iqbal freely (although when she was abducted, she had in fact just married somebody else). Her conversion and marriage certificates were also sent to the media.
This persuaded the police to stop any action, although the whereabouts of Meena’s younger sister Rekha remained unknown.
On April 10, 2023, a surprising development occurred. Meena reappeared at her parents’ home claiming she had adventurously escaped from her “husband.” She came with an infant son she had given birth to in the meantime. She issued a statement, in turn sent to the media and the authorities, claiming that she was forced to record the February 20, 2022, declaration, after having been forcibly converted to Islam and raped not only by Iqbal but by other members of the Bhambro family as well. She confirmed her story before the Khipro Session Court on April 20.
On May 18, 2023, the Sindh High Court in Hyderabad opened a case against Iqbal Bhambro and his relatives. Nobody was arrested, however.
On June 25, 2023, while Meena, her child, and her mother were on their way to a medical visit in the local hospital, Iqbal and three other men assaulted them again. Meena was abducted for the second time, while her mother was injured.
A few days ago, the story repeated itself as the Bhambros sent a video to the media where Meena again stated she followed Iqbal out of her free will.
The statement is obviously not credible, and there is still no explanation about what happened to the 12-year-old Rekha. The Kohlis and the Hindu community are again protesting and soliciting a decisive court intervention in what is yet another case of abduction, rape, forced conversion, and false marriage in Pakistan.
Marco Respinti is an Italian professional journalist, member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), author, translator, and lecturer. He has contributed and contributes to several journals and magazines both in print and online, both in Italy and abroad. Author of books and chapter in books, he has translated and/or edited works by, among others, Edmund Burke, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk, J.R.R. Tolkien, Régine Pernoud and Gustave Thibon. A Senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal (a non-partisan, non-profit U.S. educational organization based in Mecosta, Michigan), he is also a founding member as well as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for European Renewal (a non-profit, non-partisan pan-European educational organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands). A member of the Advisory Council of the European Federation for Freedom of Belief, in December 2022, the Universal Peace Federation bestowed on him, among others, the title of Ambassador of Peace. From February 2018 to December 2022, he has been the Editor-in-Chief of International Family News. He serves as Director-in-Charge of the academic publication The Journal of CESNUR and Bitter Winter: A Magazine on Religious Liberty and Human Rights.
