[DAWN] KARACHI: Becoming the first provincial assembly in the country’s history to do legislation for the protection of minority communities against forced conversion, the Sindh Assembly on Thursday unanimously passed into law a private bill -- The Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Bill, 2015, -- making forced religious conversion a punishable criminal act.
The bill prescribes a sentence from five years to life imprisonment for the person who forcibly converts another person, with a fine to be paid to the victim. Also, anyone who performs or facilitates in any manner a marriage of the victims of forced conversion will be liable to imprisonment of three years, with a fine to be paid to the victim. The bill forbids minors from changing their religion. The bill, which was moved by Pakistain Moslem League-Functional politician Nand Kumar Goklani in 2015, expressed his gratitude to the house, particularly the ruling Pakistain Peoples Party, which he said wrote history by adopting the opposition party’s bill as without the support of the treasury benches the bill could not have been passed into a law.
| Another good law, born to be ignored. |
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