ISLAMABAD: Sapna Gobia is busy preparing for her wedding in Pakistan in a few weeks. In many ways, her wedding will follow traditions passed down through generations, with the bride and groom circling a sacred fire lit by their families.
But unlike the marriage of her parents, Gobia’s will be formalized by a government certificate under a new Hindu marriage law.
The 25-year-old will be one of millions of women from Pakistan’s Hindu minority who now have the right to a certificate establishing her marital status under the Hindu Marriage Act 2017 that was signed into law on March 19.
“We Hindu girls and married women have lived in the shadow of constant fear ... of being kidnapped, forced to abandon our faith and convert and re-married forcibly to someone not from our faith,” said Gobia, a graduate in English literature from a government college in the town of Dharaki in southern Pakistan.
She hopes the new marriage law will help prevent such incidents of kidnapping of Hindu minority women and their forced conversion to other faiths for bigamous, forced marriages.
“With our marriages now legally registered with government authority ... no one could be able to stop us and our husbands from proving our marital status,” Gobia told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“More importantly, bigamy has now been termed an unlawful and punishable crime in the new law — that is a big relief.”
After partition from India in 1947, and the creation of Pakistan as a separate state for Muslims, marriages of the Hindu minority were not officially recognized, leaving Hindu women without protection under the law.
Hindus in Pakistan are now estimated to number around 3 million out of a population estimated at nearly 190 million.
“Our married daughters and sisters have been kidnapped by local non-Hindu influentials and forced to convert to Islam,” said lawyer Arjun Das, chairman of Pakistan Council of Meghwar, a Hindu community, who campaigned for the marriage law.
“Then they have been gotten forcibly re-married off to their influential kidnappers ... without their victims’ consent.”
Kidnapped
Sixteen-year-old Anjali Kumari was kidnapped three years ago from her home in Dharaki in broad daylight — and was forcibly converted to Islam within a day.
“We had to take refuge in Karachi as we faced murder threats by the kidnappers with connections to a local political group when we raised our voices and took to the streets calling for release of our daughter,” Kumari’s father, Kundan Mal Meghwar, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“She was forcibly converted and married off ... against her free will,” Mal Meghwar said.
A court in the port city of Karachi ruled in 2014 that Anjali should stay in a shelter in the city where her parents could visit her.
“But we were never allowed to meet our daughter, giving her the impression that we were no longer interested in saving her ... from her kidnapper,” he said. “She succumbed to the pressure and eventually went away with him.”
Protection
The historic Hindu Marriage Act aims to protect families — and the women and children of the Hindu community particularly, by recognizing their marriages in law, said Zahid Hamid, federal law and justice minister.
“Marriage registrars will be appointed by the government in different parts of the country as provided in the law,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“The registrars will be authorized to register Hindu marriages under the act. Besides maintaining Hindu marriage records, they will also be authorized to issue legal marriage certificates.”
The minister said particular efforts had been made to address the issue of bigamy in Pakistan.
Representatives of the Pakistan Hindu Council and Pakistan Council of Meghwar have long struggled for a law to protect women from conversions to other faiths and forced marriages.
But Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, patron-in-chief of Pakistan Hindu Council, said the new law needed strong political will to ensure its implementation and campaigns in schools and the media to raise awareness of the legislation.
“It is the responsibility of the state to provide all sorts of protections to the country’s minority groups including (protecting) Hindus from all sorts of atrocities meted out to them and ensuring they enjoy the same rights as any other person in the country,” Vankwani said.
High court lawyer and minority rights activist, Nand Lal Lavha, said awareness among lawyers, magistrates and police was key to ensuring the new law brought justice for Hindu girls and women.
Kidnapping, forced marriage: Pakistan’s Hindu women hope for protection in new law
Kidnapping, forced marriage: Pakistan’s Hindu women hope for protection in new law
Immigration agents draw guns, arrest activists following them in Minneapolis
MINNEAPOLIS: Immigration officers with guns drawn arrested some activists who were trailing their vehicles on Tuesday in Minneapolis, a sign that tensions have not eased since the departure last week of a high-profile commander.
At least one person who had an anti-ICE message on clothing was handcuffed while face-down on the ground. An Associated Press photographer witnessed the arrests.
Meanwhile, Tuesday was the deadline for the Minnesota governor, state attorney general and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul to produce documents to a federal grand jury in response to a Justice Department request for records of any effort to stifle the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Officials have denounced it as a bullying tactic.
Federal agents in the Twin Cities lately have been conducting more targeted immigration arrests at homes and neighborhoods, rather than staging in parking lots. The convoys have been harder to find and less aggressive. Alerts in activist group chats have been more about sightings than immigration-related detainments.
Several cars followed officers through south Minneapolis after there were reports of them knocking at homes. Officers stopped their vehicles and ordered activists to come out of a car at gunpoint. Agents told reporters at the scene to stay back and threatened to use pepper spray.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A federal judge last month put limits on how officers treat motorists who are following them but not obstructing their operations. Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the judge said. An appeals court, however, set the order aside.
Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, who was leading an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other big US cities, left town last week, shortly after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, the second local killing of a US citizen in January.
Trump administration border czar Tom Homan was dispatched to Minnesota instead. He warned that protesters could face consequences if they interfere with officers.
Grand jury seeks communications, records
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s office said it was complying with a grand jury subpoena requesting documents about the city’s response to Operation Metro Surge, but it released no other details.
“We have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, but when the federal government weaponizes the criminal justice system against political opponents, it’s important to stand up and fight back,” spokesperson Ally Peters said.
Other state and local offices run by Democrats were given similar requests. People familiar with the matter have told the AP that the subpoenas are related to an investigation into whether Minnesota officials obstructed enforcement through public statements.
No bond for man in Omar incident
Elsewhere, a man charged with squirting apple cider vinegar on Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar will remain in jail. US Magistrate Judge David Schultz granted a federal prosecutor’s request to deny bond to Anthony Kazmierczak.
“We simply cannot have protesters and people — whatever side of the aisle they’re on — running up to representatives who are conducting official business, and holding town halls, and assaulting them,” Assistant US Attorney Benjamin Bejar said Tuesday.
Defense attorney John Fossum said the vinegar posed a low risk to Omar. He said Kazmierczak’s health problems weren’t being properly addressed in jail and that his release would be appropriate.
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Raza reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. AP reporters Ed White in Detroit and Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed.
