In yet another horrific reminder of the rampant persecution of minorities in Pakistan, the body of Ganga, a 12 year old Hindu girl, was discovered discarded like refuse in a garbage dump in Karachi’s Saddar Lucky Star area. The girl had been brutally raped before her life was mercilessly taken, her lifeless body dumped without regard in the filth of a city that continues to fail its most vulnerable. Ganga, the daughter of Harichand, had traveled to Karachi from Sukkur with her mother, Mantri, just 20 days prior to care for a sick relative.
The heinous nature of this crime is a reflection of the widespread and institutionalized atrocities faced by Hindu, Christian, and other minority communities in Pakistan. Minorities are routinely subjected to abductions, forced conversions, and sexual violence, while the Paki establishment turns a blind eye or, worse, tacitly enables such barbarities through its inaction.
Karachi has long been a stage for these horrors, where minority girls are hunted with impunity. The justice system offers no respite, with victims and their families often finding themselves at the mercy of a corrupt and complicit establishment. Investigations into such crimes are either sluggish or nonexistent, allowing perpetrators to roam freely, emboldened by a culture of impunity. The country’s judiciary who bows to Islamist hardliners, remains silent, on rampant atrocities on the minority girls.
For years, Hindu families in Sindh, where Ganga’s family originally hails from, have lived in fear. Their daughters are snatched from their homes, forcibly converted under the guise of sham marriages, and silenced forever if they dare to resist. Ganga’s story adds to this grim tally, but her death also underscores the broader decay in Pakistan’s moral fabric, where the lives of non-Muslims are treated as collateral damage in a society consumed by Islamists.