SHEIKHUPURA, Pakistan — Sheikhupura police in June 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 in May led the influential Muslims to kidnap Masih’s sisters, said Asif Aqeel, executive director of CDI.
Gujjar family members kidnapped Rakhel Ashraf on May 13; they released her May 17 but forcibly took her 17-year-old sister Maryam Ashraf that day. CDI had 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.
On June 1, police took Rakhel Ashraf into custody and tortured her into revealing the location of the CDI office in Lahore, Aqeel said. CDI lawyers managed to negotiate the safe return of the Gujjars’ daughter Saleha on the condition that they would stop harassing the Christians and also withdraw all cases registered against them. But Saleha’s husband is still in hiding and a divorce process is underway.
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