‘Special treatment’ for standing up to bullies

FAISALABAD: Several local influential people in Faisalabad shaved the heads, eye brows and moustaches of two young men. The landlords also painted the men’s faces black and forced them to ride across the village sitting on the back of a donkey with ‘necklaces of shoes’ around their necks.

Police station Sahianwala chak 244 resident 22-year-old Subay Khan was carted around in the city on a donkey to the beat of a drum. Subay Khan’s 20-year-old friend Rasool protested against the way he was being treated and was also forced to take the ride with him and the accused moved the two youths through streets for over an hour. They also forced the youths to laugh out loudly at the way they were being treated on threat of torture.

Subay Khan’s brother Iftikhar recently tied the knot with an influential family’s girl Sughran.  After which, the girl was abducted by her brothers. When Subay Khan went to Sughran’s brother’s house to retrieve the girl, they beat him up and decided to ‘make an example of him’.

He said that he and his brother debated whether on how to approach the land lords but eventually, he decided to confront them.

“I come from a poor family and these men practically run the village, my brother fell in love with a girl from their family and she agreed to marry him,” Subay said, adding that after the marriage had taken place in secret, the family began threatening his family.

“I decided the only way to put a stop to our constant fear was to confront them and then they made an example of me,” he said.

Subay went to talk to Sughran’s brother’s, asking them to release her as she was now happily married.

“I told them that my brother would take care of her and we would treat her with kindness but they insisted that we needed to be punished for ‘daring’ to think we could marry into their family,” he said.

According to the affected family they were pushed out of the Sahianwala police station when they went to register a complaint against the landlords to reclaim Sughran. “The police were unwilling to help us, they turned us away,” Subay said.

Subay further explained, “When they were parading me on the streets my face was blackened with boot polish and they put a string of shoes around my neck, my friend Rasool saw me and protested on my behalf. They punished him by doing the same thing to him.”

“They forced us to laugh loudly and chant that we deserved what was happening to us and anyone who tried to oppose them would receive the same treatment,” Rasool said.

Faisalabad station house officer (SHO) refused to comment on the matter.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 20^th, 2010.