New Delhi: India has summoned a senior official of the Pakistan high commission over the alleged abduction of a young Sikh woman in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Sources claimed that the Pakistani diplomat had been summoned following reports that a 22-year-old woman had gone missing in Hassanabdal city in Attock district, Pakistan. A report in Dawn stated that the local police filed a complaint against an “unknown abductor” based on the complaint of the father.
Here in Delhi, Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management committee Maninder Singh Sirsa stated that a delegation met with a Ministry of External Affairs official on Sunday, demanding that the Central government raise the issue of abducted Sikh women in Pakistan.
Indian government sources pointed out that the report of the United States’ Commission for International Religious Freedom report of 2020 had noted that around 1,000 young women of minority communities in Pakistan were being kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam every year.
Earlier this year in January, the MEA had summoned a senior official in the Pakistan high commission to “lodge strong protest and share serious concerns about the recent cases of abduction of minor girls belonging to the minority Hindu community of Pakistan”. That month, India had also protested the situation at Nankana Sahib after a mob had laid siege over a complaint related to abduction of the daughter of a caretaker at the gurudwara.