SARGODHA, Pakistan — A Christian barber in a Punjab province city is still recovering from broken bones and other injuries sustained in April after eight Muslims allegedly beat and sodomized him for cutting the beard of a Muslim.
Marwat Masih, 29, initially refused the request of 19-year-old Qandeel Cheema to cut his beard in Sargodha’s Gulshan-e-Bashir town April 13, knowing that area Sunni Muslims believe the Quran prohibits it.
But Cheema, a high school student, told Masih that he had lived and studied in Lahore and therefore wanted a more modern look, Masih told Compass Direct News.
Masih was cutting Cheema’s beard, the client’s older brother — local radical Muslim land owner Shakeel Cheema — was returning by tractor from his fields and, noting the family Jeep in front of the Marwat Hair Stylist shop, stopped in, eyewitnesses said.
Shakeel Cheema shouted orders to his companions to tie Masih up and throw him into the wagon attached to his tractor, and that he ordered his younger brother to leave for Lahore at once, according to eyewitnesses.
Masih said he was blindfolded with a black cloth and taken to an unknown place where he was locked in a room.
An hour later, Shakeel Cheema and seven others arrived and began striking him with clubs, breaking his ribs, a wrist and leg bones.
His father, Laal Masih, older brother Hassrat Masih and other relatives had begun searching for him, and after midnight that night they found him lying half-naked and unconscious off the main street of Gulshan-e-Bashir, his father said.
Police have refused to file a First Information Report against Cheema and his accomplices, all of whom remained at large at press time. (TAB)
Share with others: