High-handed: Women detained to pressure kin

Neighbour says Christian man falsely accused of blasphemy for marrying a woman from Muslim family

LAHORE: Serai Alamgir City police in Gujrat have illegally detained two Christian women following registration of a blasphemy case against their brother, The Express Tribune has learnt.

In the FIR registered on Sunday, Nadeem Masih is accused of sending blasphemous text messages to the complainant, Yasir Bashir.

Speaking to The Tribune, Khalid Shehzad, president of the Muttahida Masihi Party, said a police team had raided Nadeem’s house and taken into custody his two sisters. He said when he later went to the police station to inquire about the girls he was told that they were in protective custody. He said, he believed that they had been detained to pressure their brother to surrender to the police.

Shehzad alleged that the City police had also illegally detained Amir James, a brother of the pastor who had baptised a Muslim girl before she married Nadeem sometime ago. The pastor had left his home fearing for his safety, he said.



“Nadeem did not commit any crime. He is facing this situation because he married a woman from a Muslim family,” he said. He said the complainant had borne a grudge against Nadeem since his marriage.

Shehzad said the police had not provided him a copy of the FIR, saying that it had been sealed.

A City police station official told The Tribune on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media that the two women and the man were in police detention. He said the police were interrogating them.

However, SI Muhammad Aslam, the investigation officer for the FIR, denied that anyone was being held illegally by the police. He said they were investigating the matter and it would be premature to say anything about the facts of the complaint at this stage.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 12^th, 2016.