Sheikhupura police this month tortured a young Christian woman into revealing the whereabouts of the legal team helping her family after an influential Muslim family kidnapped her and her sister, sources said.
Police also helped the Muslim family beat relatives of the Christian woman on court premises and attacked the offices of the organization trying to help her family, they said.
The Community Development Initiative (CDI) was providing legal assistance to the family of Sajid Ashraf Masih, whose elopement with a young woman from the Gujjar family in Sheikhupura last month led the influential Muslims to kidnap Masih’s sisters, said Asif Aqeel, executive director of CDI. Gujjar family members kidnapped Rakhel Ashraf, in her early 20s, on May 13; they released her on May 17 but forcibly took her 17-year-old sister Maryam Ashraf that day.
CDI, an affiliate of the European Centre for Law and Justice, helped the family negotiate the release of the two Christian sisters and also made efforts for the return of the runaway couple in order to avert religious conflict in Ghazi Minara village, outside Sheikhupura in Punjab Province. Aqeel and others feared inter-religious tensions would put the lives of some 70 Christian families of the area in jeopardy.
He said the Gujjars had filed a case with Sheikhupura police of abduction of their daughter, Saleha, naming Rakhel Ashraf and three others, as a pressure tactic for the recovery of Saleha. Aqeel said none of those named in the case knew the whereabouts of the couple.
“CDI does not support any Christian who elopes with a Muslim girl at the cost of communal strife, but in this case we were only representing Rakhel and her cousin Inderyas Masih, who had been falsely implicated by the Gujjars,” said Aqeel.
He said CDI managed to find the eloped couple, who had contracted a marriage by then, and convinced them to return to Lahore in order to help resolve the inter-religious tensions.
“The Gujjars are a very influential family of the area, and they had been threatening a repeat of the Gojra carnage if their girl was not returned to them,” Aqeel said. “This was a serious situation for the Christian family and the other Christians of the area.”
At least seven Christians were burned alive by Muslim mobs in Gojra after the spread of a rumor of blaspheming Islam on Aug. 1, 2009.
Aqeel added that Saleha’s written statement before a judge of the Lahore District Court was critical in the acquittal of Rakhel Ashraf and Inderyas Masih.
“It was important that she make a statement before the court that she had eloped with Rakhel’s brother Sajid and was not abducted as alleged in the Gujjars’ First Information Re-port,” he said.
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