Pakistan’s record of using unfair means of treatment against the minority communities was exposed once again after a former legislator of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party sought political asylum in India in one of the latest reports of atrocities across the Muslim-majority country.
Baldev Kumar, a former MLA of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf from Barikot in Khyber Pakhtun Khwa assembly, is in India, along with his family, to seek political asylum in New Delhi.
Baldev, 43, no longer wants to return to Pakistan and has alleged that minorities, including Hindus and Sikhs, are being prosecuted in Pakistan.
In 2016, a sitting MLA from his constituency was assassinated. Baldev was charged with a false murder case and acquitted in 2018. However, the above incident was not the only incident of atrocities against minorities in the cash-strapped nation. In Pakistan, many such incidents are regularly reported where Hindu, Sikh and Christian girls are forcibly converted to Islam and married to Muslim men.
The recent incident of abduction, forcible marriage and religious conversion of a Sikh girl of Nankana Sahib is a telling example. Jagjit Kaur daughter of the Granthi of Nanakana Sahib Gurdwara, the birthplace of Shri Guru Nanak Dev, in Pakistan, was allegedly abducted and forcibly converted to Islam after her marriage to a Muslim man.
The matter had raised a furore in India, with several political leaders across parties asking for action to be taken against the perpetrators.
