We recently reported on a case where a 13 year old Christian girl was raped, and when she pressed charges against her attackers, her pregnant aunt was beaten very badly. She has miscarriage the twins. However, despite the fact that the courts have rescinded the interim bails of those responsible, the police are refusing to bring them in and are siding with the attackers. Other members of the family were also beaten. Attackers like this act with virtual impunity, confident that courts and police will let them get away with it because their victims are Christians. The police initially refused to register the original rape too. This went on for a week, with the attackers continually threatening the family. The attackers, from a powerful local family, also seized land belonging to the family to pressure them, but when that failed they attacked the women in the family home, resulting Nosheen Masih losing her twins.
Police are repeatedly siding with the attackers because the father of one of them is a very influential retired police inspector. The police have already declared the son 'innocent' of the rape case because of his father's influence. The girl had been dragged out of an outside toilet, drugged, taken to the fields and gang raped by three men, one of them unidentified. To try and derail the case, the police have in court said the 13 year old was friends with the main attacker, and that she had consensual sex with all three men. The police have also helped the attackers by joining with them in pressuring the Christian family to have a 'reconciliation arrangement' with the attackers and drop charges. The family feels they are discriminated because they are poor and Christian. In this case they are getting moral support from the rest of the mostly Muslim village, who are sick of the criminal activities of the attacker’s family, but this is not enough to get justice.
Source
Beating of pregnant family members causing a miscarriage is also the feature of another recent case in the Punjab, along with collusion of the police with the attackers, although as far as we know, the victims weren't Christian. The girl in question went to search of her nephew who had been kidnapped by the men who then attacked her. The nephew had allegedly stolen a large sum of money from their house, and they were holding him until the family 'returned' the money. Neighbours found her unconscious and bloodied, but the police took her to a police station for hours, instead of to hospital, and as a result she lost the baby. She then had to remain in hospital for 5 days.
Posted by Nasarani
Submitted By Agnes Massey