Pakistan's Supreme Court last week began to work out in a more nuanced way issues surrounding the recognition of religious conversions in the wake of reports that young Hindu women were being forcibly converted to Islam. One World South Asia today reports on the case of Neelam Ludhani, a 21-year old Hindu who converted to Islam last month and married Amjad Shahzad. Neelam's father, Misri Ludhani, a Pakistani government official, originally filed suit claiming that his daughter had been abducted and forcibly converted.
By the time the case got to the Supreme Court, however, Misri supported his daughter's claim that her conversion was voluntary. But Misri told the court he was still concerned that his daughter would be abandoned by her new husband who already has one wife and a child. So the Court took unusual action. It ordered that Neelam be allowed to live with her husband, but also required that her husband's family transfer property to Neelam, provide a separate house for her and her husband, and post bond to assure that Neelam would be properly supported in the future. Also local police were to furnish periodic reports on how Neelam was being treated. Finally, ignoring requests by the husband's family that Neelam have no further contact with her parents because they belong to a "non-book" faith, the court ordered that Amjad's family facilitate visits by Neelam to her parents' home in Karachi.
I.A. Rehman, secretary-general of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, praised the court's decision, saying that it took account of the vulnerability of young women in these situations. Indeed, at a conference last week on "Forced Conversion of Women and Minorities Rights in Pakistan", organized by the Minority Rights Commission of Pakistan and reported on today by AsiaNews.it, it was disclosed that forced conversions of women married to Muslims result in the death of between 500 to 600 people a year in Pakistan.
