Islamabad: The disappearance of Hindu girl from Sukkur district of Pakistan in 2021, who remains missing till now, exposes the weakness of provincial law enforcement mechanisms and the disparity in how urgency and state resources are applied when the victims belong to powerless and marginalised communities, a report has stated.
Nearly five years have passed since the minor Hindu girl – Priya Kumari, disappeared from Sukkur district on the day of Ashura in August 2021. Priya Kumari’s family continues to wait for her recovery, whom the authorities have claimed is still alive, according to a leading daily in Pakistan.
The incident happened when Priya Kumar was helping her family in distributing water and refreshments to mourners outside their residence in Sangharar village of Sukkur during Muharram processions. The young girl suddenly vanished amid the movement of the crowd, causing panic within the family and the local community. Her family immediately filed a First Information Report in the police station.
“Over the years, several Joint Investigation Teams were constituted, suspects were interrogated, intelligence operations were reportedly conducted and different leads were pursued by law enforcement agencies, yet none of these efforts produced the result that mattered most, the recovery of the child herself,” Ali Gul Leghari wrote in an opinion piece in Pakistan Today stated.
“The inability of the provincial authorities to resolve a case of such national visibility despite the passage of years has increasingly strengthened public perceptions that either serious operational gaps exist within the investigative structure or the case has not been pursued with the level of determination that similar cases involving influential families would have received,” it added.
In July 2024, provincial Home Minister met Priya Kumari’s parents and publicly informed them that their daughter was believed to be alive and that investigators had found important clues about her possible whereabouts. These statements revived a fragile sense of hope for grieving parents. However, they also increased expectations of the people as the government said that the child was alive and was potentially traceable.
“For Priya Kumari’s mother, the statement proved emotionally devastating in a different way, because the knowledge that one’s child may still be alive somewhere while the state remains unable to bring her home creates a form of psychological suffering that cannot easily be described in words. In recent months, videos circulating on social media have shown her crying helplessly while questioning why other abducted children are being recovered within weeks whereas her daughter continues to remain missing after nearly half a decade,” a report in Pakistan Today stated.
Earlier in April, a leading minority rights organisation strongly condemned the forced conversion and marriage of a minor Hindu girl in Pakistan’s Sindh province, raising concerns over the safety of the minority communities across the country. According to the Voice of Pakistan Minority (VOPM), Pooja, a ninth-grade girl and daughter of Ramsun Thakur, was allegedly abducted and thrust into a “nightmare” of forced conversion.
(IANS)
