Hindu Families In Pakistan Forced To Migrate To India

Amid increasing cases of violence and lack of security against their community, 60 Hindu families from Balochistan and Sindh have decided to migrate to India.

The families — around 300 people — arrived in Rajasthan via the Thar Express train this week, carrying all they owned. Community leaders said the migrants fled a pattern of forced conversions, kidnappings for ransom, and extortion targeting Hindus in Pakistan's southern provinces.

The case that galvanized the migration was the abduction and forced conversion of Manisha Kumari, a Hindu girl from Jacobabad in Sindh, earlier in the year — one of several such incidents that year that sparked outrage on both sides of the border.

Pakistan's government initially dismissed the exodus, with Interior Minister Rehman Malik claiming the families were only visiting India on a religious pilgrimage for Janmashtami and would return. But the migrants themselves told Indian officials and media they had no intention of going back.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari ordered an inquiry into reports that Hindus were being forced to flee, and the issue was taken up in India, where BJP leaders including Sushma Swaraj raised the plight of the migrants and urged the government to grant them refugee status.

The migrants, most of them small traders and farmers, now face an uncertain future in India — stateless, homeless, and waiting for Indian citizenship.

A source link could not be verified during editorial review; key facts above were cross-checked against contemporary wire and press reporting of the August 2012 migration.