Pakistan SC says no need for specific law on conversion issue

Islamabad (Pakistan) : The Supreme Court on Thursday disposed of a petition moved by the Pakistan Hindu Council calling for a specific law against elements who lure people into changing their religion.

A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Jawad S. Khawaja and Justice Khilji Arif Hussain disposed of the petition when the government drew the attention of the court towards Article 20 of the Constitution which ensured the freedom to profess religion and to manage religious institutions.

The petition was moved against the backdrop of allegations by the Hindu community that young Hindu girls were abducted and forced to change their religion and married off to Muslim men.“There is no necessity of a specific legislation because every citizen has the right to practise religion of his own and in case of enforced conversion the law always takes its own course,” the chief justice observed.

Moved by Advocate Muhammad Akram Sheikh, the petition requested the Supreme Court to direct the government to promulgate a law making it an offence punishable with imprisonment for a person who converts or attempts to convert a person from one religion to another by use of force, allurement or by fraudulent means or aids or abets any such conversion.

The Article 20 of the Constitution says that every citizen shall have the right to profess, practise and propagate his religion and that every religious denomination and every sect shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.

“This bench is a great supporter of minorities because they are the subject of the Constitution but sometimes we are helpless when cases of conversion do surface,” the chief justice observed in an obvious reference to the recent controversy over the marriage of three women from interior of Sindh, namely Rinkal Kumari, 19, of Mirpur Mathelo; Dr Lata Kumari, 30, of Jacobabad; and Aasha Devi with Muslim men.

In its petition, the council deplored that only a few incidents of forced conversions had reached the media.

Every now and then, the petition said, some fanatic elements from the majority community coerced and exploited economically, politically and socially individuals belonging to Hindu and Christian faiths to convert to Islam, adding that the intensity and scale of conversion was certainly much more than reported by media.

The question of protection against forced conversion was a question of public importance involving fundamental rights, the petition said, adding that such incidents had affected the image and reputation of Pakistan in relation to the protection and enforcement of fundamental rights and constitutional guarantees to citizens generally and to minorities in particular.

Source : Dawn