Four Hindu siblings abducted, converted, and split by court in Sindh – Pak media calls it ‘willing embrace of Islam’
In June 2025, another case of religious persecution was reported in the Sindh province of Pakistan where four siblings, three sisters and their 13-year-old male cousin, were abducted by their teachers, forcibly converted to Islam, and then presented in court. The court allowed two adults to stay away from their family while two minors were reluctantly handed back to their parents. Pakistani media, including the notorious ARY News, which is banned in India for its anti-India propaganda, whitewashed the incident as a “willing embrace of Islam”.
Source: ARY News
Siblings lured, abducted and converted
The incident occurred in Shahdadpur, Sindh. Twenty-two-year-old Jia Bai, 20-year-old Dia Bai, 16-year-old Disha Bai and 13-year-old Harjeet Kumar were abducted. The adults among them are reportedly medical students. Their mother publicly named Farhan Khaskheli, a local computer teacher, as the man who took away all her daughters and brainwashed them. The children were later traced to Karachi and produced before the Shahdadpur court.
Despite the family’s allegations of abduction and coercion, the court ruled that the two adult girls would stay in a shelter home in Karachi. The court asserted that the adult women were free to “decide” whatever they wanted to do. The minors, however, were returned to the family but only after recording statements that they embraced Islam “willingly”. The family of the four suspect those statements were made under duress and police pressure.
Courts shielding abductors in the name of ‘freedom’
The court discharged two accused, namely Farhan Khaskheli and Zulfiqar Khaskheli, from kidnapping charges based on the statements of the children. This is not the first time Pakistani courts have seemingly acted in favour of Islamists in cases involving Hindus being forced to convert to Islam. Past rulings have cited “Islamic law” to deny parents custody, especially when minor girls are married off to their abductors post-conversion. In this case too, a penalty of Rs 1 crore was imposed if the parents tried to re-convert the minors to Hinduism.
The judicial reluctance to apply child protection and minority rights laws is not new in Pakistan. Blasphemy and religious freedom laws are routinely misused to suppress minorities.
ARY News – media arm of Islamist propaganda?
Perhaps the not-so-shocking aspect of this case is the Pakistani media’s role in whitewashing the crime. ARY News reported the entire matter under the headline “Shahdadpur: Four Hindu siblings embrace Islam in Sindh”. The wording was not accidental. It mirrored the usual state-approved script used to sanitise coercive conversions to make it seem as if teenage minors woke up one day and voluntarily renounced their faith out of some divine realisation. There was no mention of trauma, grooming, or duress. The report simply said “willing embrace”.
Notably, ARY News is not unfamiliar with peddling religious propaganda. ARY Network has a long history of promoting Islamist narratives. According to Journalist Swati Goel Sharma, ARY exclusively partnered in Pakistan for Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s controversial film PK. They promoted it with the explicit label of being a “satire on Hindu Gods”. The film, which was already accused in India of mocking Hindu practices, was rolled out in Pakistan with pride. Ironically, the same group has now pushed the story of “willing” conversion of Hindu children.
Furthermore, the network’s ideological slant becomes clearer when we recall Waar, a 2013 production. It was a high-budget, anti-India, anti-Hindu propaganda film that glorified the Pakistani military while painting Hindus and Indians as notorious villains. Until 2019, Waar was shockingly available on Netflix India. Sanjeev Newar, co-founder of Gems of Bollywood and Agni Samaj, and others, ran a campaigns against it, leading to its removal from the platform.
The film’s lead actor, Shaan Shahid, is a vocal Hindu-hater. He was reportedly offered a major role in Aamir Khan’s Ghajini, further raising questions about Bollywood’s blind eye towards Pakistan’s extremist media ties.
ARY is closely aligned with Pakistan’s spy agency ISI. It has repeatedly pushed anti-Hindu and anti-India narratives. In this case, it posed as a “source” of truth when Hindu children were abducted and converted. Disturbingly, international media houses often rely on these same biased Pakistani outlets for “ground reports”, which further whitewash the atrocities against Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan on global platforms.
Systemic persecution dating back to Partition
The case fits a long-standing pattern of religious cleansing in Sindh. Since Pakistan was created in 1947, the Hindu population in the neighbouring country has dramatically decreased, especially in rural Sindh. Abductions, forced conversions and marriages of underage Hindu girls are common and occur at an alarming frequency. Human rights groups estimate over 1,000 Hindu girls are forcibly converted and married every year, often with police protection for the perpetrators.
Despite reserved seats and constitutional assurances, the Hindu minority in Pakistan remains politically voiceless, socially ghettoised, and legally unprotected. Powerful religious clerics and Islamist groups act with impunity, while Hindu families are left to fight both the abductors and the legal system that enables them.
Horrifying past of forced conversions in Pakistan
In April 2024, it was reported that a Hindu girl was abducted and converted in Sindh.
In February 2023, 17-year-old Hindu girl was kidnapped and converted to Islam in Sindh. She had claimed to have converted on her own will.
In May 2023, a 9-year-old Hindu girl was kidnapped, converted to Islam, and married to a 55-year-old Muslim man in Sindh.
These cases are just tip of the iceberg.
Denial of basic rights and dignity
What unfolded in Shahdadpur is not just a family tragedy. It is a community trauma and a national shame, which Pakistan, sadly, promotes and prides itself on. Minors get brainwashed and separated from their families on a regular basis. They are declared converts with little regard for their age, safety and consent. And then, the media calls it a “willing embrace”. The courts sanction the atrocities. The system, repeatedly, stands with the abductors, not the victims.
Until Pakistan confronts this dangerous nexus of religious extremism, judicial double standards, and media complicity, its minorities will continue to be second-class citizens, denied the right to religion, dignity, and even childhood.
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