Hindus, Sikhs tortured in Pakistan, says ex-PTI MLA; seeks asylum in India

Khanna (Punjab) [India], Sep 10 (ANI): A leader from Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party is seeking asylum in India along with his family, over atrocities on minorities in Pakistan.

Baldev Kumar, a former MLA from Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), stated that minorities, including Hindus and Sikhs, are being prosecuted in Pakistan

Even Muslims in Pakistan are not safe as life in the country is full of difficulties, he told ANI on Tuesday.

“Not only minorities but even Muslims are not safe there (Pakistan). We are surviving in Pakistan with a lot of difficulties. I request the Indian government to give me asylum here. I will not go back,” Baldev Kumar told ANI.

Baldev’s admission once again exposed Pakistan’s record of using unfair means of treatment against the minority communities.

“The Indian government should announce a package so that the Hindu and Sikh families staying in Pakistan can come here. I want Modi Sahab to do something for them. They are tortured there,” he said.

A former PTI MLA from Barikot in Khyber Pakhtun Khwa (KPK) assembly, Baldev is in India along with his family to seek political asylum.

In 2016, a sitting MLA from his constituency was assassinated. Baldev was charged with a false murder case and acquitted in 2018, adding to a number of false cases that minority members are framed in by cash-strapped Islamabad.

In Pakistan, incidents, where Hindu, Sikh and Christian girls are forcibly converted to Islam and married to Muslim men, are reported regularly.

The recent incident of abduction, forcible marriage and religious conversion of a Sikh girl of Nankana Sahib is a telling example. (ANI)