"No standing to lecture India": New Delhi hits Pakistan on minorities at UN as Sindh's forced-conversion data surfaces
UN experts say three in four reported forced-conversion victims in Pakistan in 2025 were Hindu, most of them teenage girls in Sindh.
- The Times of India
India told the United Nations that Pakistan has "no standing to lecture India" on religious freedom, saying its minorities are shrinking and their rights regularly abused, The Times of India reported. First Secretary Bhavika Mangalanandan spoke on Thursday in an interactive dialogue with Nazila Ghanea, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, whose interim report dealt with funeral rights in exceptional circumstances.
The report referred to "systemic denial of funeral rights" in security operations in Jammu and Kashmir, which India contested, The Hindu reported. "It is deeply ironic that a State that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers who were killed in combat in 1999 in Kargil unabashedly speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom, and burials," Mangalanandan said.
She said the Indian Army had buried Pakistani soldiers with military honours and Islamic rites, and told Pakistan to look at developments in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir such as Rawalakot. On the same day, at an interfaith dialogue in Hyderabad, Sindh, former member of Pakistan's National Assembly Neelam Kumari alleged that Hindu girls continue to face abduction, forced conversion and forced marriage, ANI reported, citing The Express Tribune.
She said she was pursuing police in Umerkot and Ghotki over a girl reportedly abducted from Umerkot, and that Pakistan's minority-protection laws had little effect because they are poorly enforced. UN human rights experts have said coercion and weak legal safeguards allow forced conversions through marriage, mostly of Hindu and Christian girls.
They stressed that any change of religion must be voluntary and that child marriage invalidates consent under international law.
Key data
UN experts: about 75% of reported 2025 cases involved Hindu victims and 25% Christian; about 80% occurred in Sindh; girls aged 14 to 18 were targeted most often.
Why it matters
UN-sourced numbers give long-standing community complaints from Sindh a weight that activists' testimony alone did not carry. India is now using them to counter Pakistan's Kashmir narrative at the UN.
GK: did you know?
Mughal emperor Akbar was born at Umerkot (Amarkot) in Sindh on 15 October 1542, while his father Humayun was sheltered by the town's Hindu ruler.
