Daily Times

On Wednesday, a woman, Daya Bhel, was raped and murdered in the Sanjhoro district. The details are almost too gory to explain. Her head was separated from her body and the flesh ripped from her skull, after which the remains of her body were dumped in a wheat field to rot.

While the crime reflects the precarious situation Pakistani females find themselves in every day, it is bound to be picked up by the media across the border as a textbook example of all that is wrong with our religious harmony. They might not be that off-the-mark, after all. Many a member of religious minorities can be seen trapped between religious and national discourses-systematically marginalised, forced into unpaid labour, intimidated into converting, and ignored by policymakers. May it be due to hawkish pressures or individualistic crusades, politicians often forge a narrative that emphasises upon Muslim heritage while downplaying the contributions of other communities.

In March, 18-year-old Pooja Kumari was shot to death in Sukkur when she refused to marry a Muslim man from an influential family. He was arrested when news of her death provoked outrage on social media-an anomaly that does not represent the majority of such cases. Most instances of abductions and forced conversions go unreported and even when they are reported, law enforcement tends to take no notice.

Desecrations of places of worship, attacks on businesses and homes as well as forced migrations–the white in our flag continues to witness the worst of the worst yet perseveres in the hopes that the government might do something to protect them.

It was not too long ago that the government failed to pass a bill against forced conversions despite a parliamentary majority in the national assembly, a severe constitutional violation that was quickly brushed aside and never brought up again.

Daya Bhel’s life ended much too early. The way that she was murdered is evidence that her perpetrators did not feel a second of remorse as they dug into her body and pulled it apart. Bhel’s murder forms a sinister pattern of atrocities that are intended to force both members of her gender as well as her religion into virtual extinction. It also speaks volumes about the neglect minorities face at the hands of law enforcement, which does not feel compelled to prosecute crimes unless they make headlines. *