A Pakistani Girl Is Snatched Away, Payment for a Family Debt

A Pakistani Girl Is Snatched Away, Payment for a Family Debt
In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, Pakistani Hindu Jeevti sits in her husband's house in Pyaro Lundh, Pakistan. The night Jeevti disappeared, her family slept outside to escape Pakistan's brutal summer heat; in the morning she was gone, snatched by a wealthy landlord to whom her parents owed $1,000 dollars. She is one of the estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls taken from their homes every year in Pakistan for supposed repayments of debt, most of them ending up married off to older men and forcibly converted to Islam. AP Photo/B.K. Bangash
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The mother rummages through a large metal trunk, searching for a picture of her young daughter taken away in the night to be the bride of a man who says the family owed him $1,000.

Beneath the blankets, clothes and silver ornaments that she wears with her sari, Ameri Kashi Kohli finds two photos, carefully wrapped in plastic, of her smiling daughters.

Ameri tries to remember her daughter Jeevti’s age; few of this country’s desperately poor have birth certificates. With a grin at a sudden recollection she says, “I remember her sister, my youngest, was born when there was a big earthquake in Pakistan.”

That was 2005. Jeevti was 3 years old at the time, Ameri says. That means the girl was just 14 when she disappeared into the hands of the land manager her parents were beholden to.

Her mother is sure that Jeevti paid the price for a never-ending debt.

Ameri says she and her husband borrowed roughly $500 when they first began to work on the land, but she throws up her hands and says the debt was repaid. “We started with a loan, and every time they said they were taking money for our loan, but no one gave us anything to show we paid.” Instead, the debt doubled.

In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, Hamid Brohi shows a court document as he sits with his wife Jeevti in Pyaro Lundh, Pakistan. The night Jeevti disappeared, her family slept outside to escape Pakistan's brutal summer heat; in the morning she was gone, snatched by a wealthy landlord to whom her parents owed $1,000 dollars. She is one of the estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls taken from their homes every year in Pakistan for supposed repayments of debt, most of them ending up married off to older men and forcibly converted to Islam. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2016, Hamid Brohi shows a court document as he sits with his wife Jeevti in Pyaro Lundh, Pakistan. The night Jeevti disappeared, her family slept outside to escape Pakistan's brutal summer heat; in the morning she was gone, snatched by a wealthy landlord to whom her parents owed $1,000 dollars. She is one of the estimated 1,000 Christian and Hindu girls taken from their homes every year in Pakistan for supposed repayments of debt, most of them ending up married off to older men and forcibly converted to Islam. AP Photo/B.K. Bangash