HUNDREDS of Christians were driven out of Islamabad’s Mehrabad slum by rioting Muslims after an illiterate, mentally-impaired 11-year-old girl Rimsha was accused of burning a paper with verses from Koran written on it.
Rimsha was arrested on August 16 and has been in solitary confinement ever since in the high-security Adiala Jail.
A Christian activist Xavier William who visited Rimsha recently in the jail said the girl had bruises on her face and hands after she was assaulted by the mob. ‘She could not make eye contact and she was frightened and traumatised,’ he said.
A local imam Hafiz Mohd Khalid Chisti incited the Muslim mob to attack Rimsha and her family. He maintains the girl knew what she was doing and has threatened to have all the Christians in the slum burnt alive.
Even as the anti-Christian violence raged in the Mehrabad slum, a 11-year-old Christian boy identified as Samuel Yaqoob disappeared from the Christian colony in Faisalabad in Punjab province. On August 22, his body was found dumped in a drain. His family said his body bore signs of torture and mutilation marks.
On 20 August, while the controversy over Rimsha’s arrest raged, an 11-year-old Christian boy named Samuel Yaqoob disappeared from the Christian colony in Faisalabad, Punjab Province, on his way to the market. On 22 August his body was found dumped in a drain.
He had been so severely tortured, mutilated and burnt that his family could only recognise him from a mark on his forehead. There had not been any ransom demand and detectives in Faisalabad are investigating whether accusations of blasphemy had been made against the boy.
