Case launched against police after Christian dies in custody in Pakistan
A Christian teenager has died in police custody in Pakistan after allegedly being severely tortured for six days.
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| Adnan Masih’s funeral took place on 11 June |
Adnan Masih (18) from Sharaqpur Sharif was arrested on 4 June in connection with the case of a young Muslim woman who had gone missing. The police had also rounded up local Muslim youths to question them over the matter, but they were all released.
Adnan insisted that he knew nothing of the woman in question; she had apparently had an affair with a Muslim man and left her husband, but her parents claimed that she had been kidnapped.
Officers seized mobile phones belonging to Adnan and the woman and obtained their call records from their respective network providers. They found no record of any communication between them.
They did however discover calls between the woman and three young Muslim men from the area. The Muslims were summoned to the police station but later set free, seemingly after the payment of a bribe.
Officers then tried to force Adnan to confess to being involved in the woman’s disappearance, allegedly subjecting him to severe torture: they beat him round the head with an iron rod, cut him with a sharp knife, broke his legs and pulled the nails out of his fingers and toes. After six days of torture, when Adnan was almost dead, his neck was broken. The Christian’s body was hanged in the bathroom; police claimed that he had committed suicide.
The matter was reported by a local pastor to CLAAS, a Christian legal organisation in Pakistan that Barnabas Fund supports, who immediately sent an investigative team to the Sharaqpur Sharif Police Station, where Adnan had died on 10 June.
Over 4,000 local Christians blocked the road in protest, demanding justice and the arrest of those responsible for his death.
The CLAAS team succeeded in persuading senior officers to register a First Information Report (FIR), which launches a criminal investigation in Pakistan, against three officers.
Adnan’s funeral took place on 11 June after a post-mortem had been carried out. He was the son of a retired head teacher and had six siblings. Adnan lived with his parents in Sharaqpur Sharif and worked as an air-conditioning and fridge mechanic in Lahore.
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Before independence, Hindus and Sikhs had formed 20 per cent of the population of the areas now forming Pakistan, presently the percentage has “whittled down to one-and-a half percent” . Today all the non-Muslim minorities ie Christians, Hindus , Sikhs etc together forms only about three percent. (Shame, Shame) And in contrast look at the secular India where every communities is prospering ” Dana Dan” . Yes there are problems as all communities jostling there to make own space. Yet they have constitutiona guarantee for equal opportunity. And if you do not believe, please take out the list of minority non Hindu politicians as full fledged leaders ( not as mere tokenism) of various political parties , or defense officials, or full fledged high ranking government ministers etc etc .