LAHORE, Pakistan — Police in Pakistan have delayed registering a complaint by a Catholic woman gang-raped by three Muslim men in front of her 3-year-old daughter and are pressuring her to withdraw the case, she said.
Sheeza Intikhab, a 20-year-old Catholic woman in Chak No. 42 village, Sangla Hill, Nankana Sahib District in Punjab Province, was raped in her home by Muhammad Mohsin, Zahid Gujjar and a man identified only as Arsalan on June 11 while her husband was away at work, she said.
“What happened to me has left my child traumatized,” Intikhab said. “She fell ill after the incident, but even though she is well now, she has become very insecure and starts crying when she doesn’t see me around. I’m a poor and weak Christian, but I deserve justice regardless of my social standing. I appeal to the chief minister of Punjab, who’s also a woman, to take notice of the police’s attitude and punish without prejudice those who have wronged me.”
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Intikhab, who gave permission to publish her name to improve her chances of attaining justice, and her husband were employed by their landlord, Malik Nadeem, in May to manage his cattle farm, where they were provided with living quarters on the premises. Mohsin, a relative of Nadeem, sent her husband to another district for work on the day of the assault, she said.
“I was busy looking after my daughter when, around 9 p.m., Mohsin and his two accomplices forced their way into my room and raped me in front of my child,” Intikhab told Christian Daily International–Morning Star News. “I cried and shouted for help, but there was no one who could rescue me from them.”
The assailants later threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone about the assault, she said.
“When my husband came home later that night, I told him what had happened to me in his absence,” she said. “I also told him that the men had warned me that they would kill us all if we went to the police, but my husband told me that we must register a case.”
The impoverished couple’s hope for justice was dashed when they went to the police that night with Intikhab’s mother.
“We were shocked when instead of registering our First Information Report [FIR], the [officer] in charge of the police station, Sub-Inspector Kamran Shahzad, started abusing us and refused to accept our application,” she said. “We pleaded with him for justice, but he ordered a female constable to push us out of the police station. When we protested against this attitude, the constable named Irum slapped me multiple times and forced us out of the building.”
The next day, she and her husband were at her parents’ home when Shahzad arrived and forced them and their daughter to go with him to the police station.
“When we reached the station, Shahzad told me to place my hand on my daughter’s head and swear that my allegation against the three Muslims was true,” she said. “After I did what he said, Shahzad sent me with a female constable to the hospital for medico-legal examination. However, the staff there sent us back, saying there was no doctor available to conduct my test.”
Police told them to return home and wait for their call, she said. After nine days, they still had not heard from the police, she added.
On June 21, Intikhab, along with her husband and mother, returned to the police station to follow up on their complaint. As they waited, she said, Shahzad came out of his office and asked why they had come again.
“When we told him that we wanted to register an FIR, his attitude became very rude again, and he started cursing [at] us,” she said. “When my husband told him that we would not leave till the complaint was registered, Shahzad finally relented and directed the duty officer to accept our application.”
Police then formed a raiding team and arrested Mohsin, she said, adding that an FIR was registered a day later, June 22, and the other two suspects were arrested the same day.
“After the arrests, the police took me to the hospital for [a] medical examination, but when we went there, a constable named Sikandar started pressuring me to drop the case,” she said. “He said, ‘Take 150,000 Pakistani Rupees [$530 USD] and forget this incident ever happened.’”
Though all three suspects are reportedly in police custody, their arrests haven’t been formally recorded in the official register to date, said Safdar Chaudhry, chairman of Raah-e-Nijaat Ministry in Pakistan, a member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). Chaudhry’s group intervened in the case when local pastors informed them about the family’s plight.
“Sheeza’s case amplifies the barriers to access to justice for people belonging to vulnerable and marginalized communities, especially poor Christian families,” Chaudhry told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News.
The police’s reluctance to prosecute the suspects vindicated the family’s assertion that the assailants had influenced officers with money and political contacts, he said.
“There’s no doubt that the accused are very influential, due to which the police are not taking stern action against them,” Chaudhry said. “We have engaged a local Christian attorney on behalf of the victim’s family to pursue the matter in court. It’s shameful that instead of protecting the victim, the local police were making efforts to protect the accused.”
As justice remains remote, she and her husband were determined to take the matter to court despite threats and pressure to withdraw the complaint, she said.
Pakistan, which has a population that is more than 96% Muslim, ranked eighth on Open Doors’ World Watch List of the most difficult places to be a Christian.
This article was originally published at Christian Daily International–Morning Star News
