LAHORE, Pakistan — Muslims who kidnapped and forcibly converted an 18-year-old Christian woman to Islam severely beat her mother on two occasions to discourage her from trying to recover her daughter, lawyers said. On April 25, Muhammad Akhter and Muhammad Munir broke into the home of 50-year-old widow Fazeelat Bibi while her sons were at work and beat her because they were upset at her continuous demands that they return her daughter Saira, Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF) leaders said. CLF President Khalid Gill said neighbors’ calls to the police emergency number went unheeded as the men beat her in Lahore’s predominantly Muslim Bostaan Colony.
On April 18, Akhter and members of his family had beaten Bibi with clubs and ripped her clothes when the widow, having received a tearful phone call from her kidnapped daughter that day, went to their house to argue for her release. In her telephone call, Bibi said Saira told her that Munir, Akhter and Munir’s sister Billo Bibi had kidnapped her, stolen the jewelry of her dowry, forced her to convert to Islam and were pressuring her to marry Munir. When Saira was kidnapped March 10, she was engaged to a young Christian man in Youhanabad, a large Christian slum on the outskirts of Lahore.
“Saira’s brothers and I were very joyful because we were about to fix her wedding date,” Fazeelat Bibi said. Kotlakhpat Police Station Inspector Rana Shafiq has refused to help her recover her daughter and has explicitly sided with his fellow Muslims, Gill said. Shafiq was unavailable for comment.
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