LAHORE, Pakistan — A Christian mother of seven who last August was kidnapped, raped, sold into marriage and threatened with death if she did not convert to Islam was freed in March.
After she refused to convert and accept the marriage, human traffickers had threatened to kill Shaheen Bibi, 40, if her father, Manna Masih, did not pay a ransom of $1,170 by March 5, the released woman said.
A member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Lahore, Bibi said she was kidnapped in August 2010 after she met a woman named Parveen on a bus on her way to work. Her father asked police to take action, but they did nothing as her captors had taken her to a remote area between the cities of Rahim Yar Khan and Sadiqabad, considered a “no-go” area ruled by dangerous criminals.
Masih then sought legal assistance from the Community Development Initiative (CDI), a human rights affiliate of the European Center for Law and Justice in Pakistan. CDI Field Officer Haroon Tazeem, Masih and police went to Khan Baila, near Rahim Yar Khan, and at midnight March 6 the rescue team managed to get hold of Bibi, the CDI source said.
The kidnappers handed her over on the condition that they would not be the targets of further legal action, but the team told her captors that those who had sold her in Lahore would be brought to justice.
Chained to a tree outside a house during the week before the rescue, Bibi lifted her eyes in prayer, saw a cross in the sky and was comforted that God’s mighty hand would release her even though her father had no money to pay ransom, she said.
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