SANGLA HILL, Pakistan — A Muslim land owner in Pakistan subjected a 25-year-old Christian to burns and a series of humiliations in October, including falsely charging him with having sex with his own niece, because he refused to work for him without pay.
Fayaz Masih is in jail with burns on his body after No. 115 Chitraan Wala village head Zafar Iqbal Ghuman and other villagers beat him, set fire to him and shaved off some of his facial hair Oct. 3, said Pastor Yaqub Masih.
Ghuman, who is accustomed to forcing Christians into slavery, and 11 of his men abducted Masih from his home at gunpoint and brought him to Ghuman’s farmhouse, according to Yaqub Masih and former politician Yousaf Gill, both of nearby No. 118 Chour Muslim village. After the armed men had beaten Masih and rubbed charcoal on his face when he declined a final request to work in Ghuman’s fields, Ghuman announced that Masih had had relations with Masih’s 18-year-old niece, Sumeera.
Some threw kerosene on Masih and alternately set him on fire and extinguished the flames, Gill said. Masih’s sister, Seema Bibi, said the accusation that Masih had had sex with her daughter was false. She said Ghuman told her daughter at gunpoint to testify against Masih in court Oct. 4, but Sumeera said under oath that Masih was innocent and that Ghuman had tried to force her to testify against her uncle. A judge ruled that Sumeera had not had illicit relations with Masih, and that therefore she was free to go home.
In spite of the court ruling, police were coerced into registering a false charge of adultery against him under Article 376 of the Islamic statutes of the Pakistan Penal Code, First Information Report No. 361/10, at the Sangla Hill police station.
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