Krishna Kumari set to be first-ever Hindu woman senator in Pakistan

Born to a poor peasant, Jugno Kolhi, in February 1979, Kolhi and her family members spent nearly three years in a private jail owned by the landlord of Kunri of Umerkot district.She was a grade 3 student at the time when held captive.

Kolhi belongs to a remote village in Nagarparkar district of Thar in Sindh province.

She is from the family of the valiant freedom fighter Rooplo Kolhi, who had waged a war against the invading British colonialist forces when they had attacked Sindh from Nagarparkar side in 1857. Subsequently, he was arrested and hanged by the Britishers on August 22, 1858.

She was married to Lalchand, a student of the Sindh Agriculture University, at the age of 16, when she was studying in 9th grade. However, she pursued her studies and in 2013 she did masters in sociology from the Sindh University.

Krishna, now a mother of four, has become a symbol of hope in Thar and its nearby districts where she has been fighting for human rights of the underprivileged people.

She stressed that education, particularly for girls in Sindh and her home region of Thar, will remain her top priority for the next six years if she is elected as a senator.

She participated in case-studies, focusing on women in bondage, organised seminars on bonded labour, sexual harassment and other human rights issues. In her community, she also met and convinced many parents to send their girl child to school.

If elected, Kohli would become just the second Hindu woman to be elected to Pakistan’s senate — after Ratna Bhagwandas Chawla, who sat from 2006 to 2012 — but the first from the scheduled Hindu caste.