Timeline: The disappearance of Raveena and Reena

The night the girls went missing

On March 20, while the Hindu community in the Daharki area of Sindh’s Ghotki district was celebrating Holi, two sisters, Raveena Meghwar and Reena Meghwar, disappeared from their home.

Their father, a poor cobbler, and his two sons, spend the night searching for the girls. They moved from door-to-door asking if anyone had seen the two. They inquired at local hospitals and even at the police station in their area.

By morning, there were no traces of the girls. The worried old man, and other members of the community blocked the main thoroughfare connecting Sindh with Punjab, in protest.

Finally, the Station House Officer (SHO) Daharki convinced the community to let the traffic pass. The officer then filed a First Information Report (FIR) against six men, three of whom were unknown, for kidnapping the girls.

Videos go viral

The next day, a video emerged on the social media showing the two girls converting to Islam in Bharchundi Sharif in Daharki. A man named Mian Javed has been identified as the person at whose house the girls accepted Islam. He further named Raveena as Aasia and Reena as Shazia.

The journey to Punjab

On March 22, the girls reach Rahim Yar Khan in the province of Punjab. Here, it is alleged that they again renounced their faith in front of lawyers at a bar room in Khanpur. It is unclear who was accompanying these women or who brought them to Punjab.

The same day, the girls were married off to Safdar Khobar and Barkat Malik, at the residence of Jawad Hasan, the general secretary of Sunni Tehreek. A video of the ceremony and of a cleric purportedly solemnising the nikah also surfaced on the social media a day later.

Both the men, the girls were wedded to, are married. Khobar has three children, while Malik has one. They lived in the same neighbourhood as the teenage sisters.

What now?

The Islamabad High Court has ordered official protection for the two girls, due to concerns about their safety. Separately, on the prime minister’s orders, authorities have launched a probe to determine if the girls were abducted and then forcibly converted.

In Punjab, eight men have been arrested and Jawad Hasan has been booked under Section 16 of the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order.

Can the men be prosecuted?

For abduction and forcing the girls to convert. No. There is no law in Sindh banning forced conversions. In 2017, the Sindh government rejected a bill tabled to outlaw the practice and punish forced conversions with jail time and life imprisonment.

However, Sindh does have the Child Marriage Restraint Act which sets the legal minimum age of marriage for boys and girls to 18 years. Both girls, according to their families are minors. Raveena, they say, is 12-years-old and Reena is 15. However, there are other reports that the girls maybe 18 and 20, though no documented proof has surfaced yet.

If the girls are underage, then even in Punjab, where they were allegedly married, the legal age to marry is 16 years.