Christian couple burned alive

A young Christian couple,   parents of three children, were beaten up and burned alive at a brick kiln in the Punjab province on the morning of 4 November for allegedly burning pages of the Qur’an. The mother was pregnant with her fourth child.

“They were beaten up and burned alive,” Shahbaz Masih, elder brother of Shahzad Masih who perished along with his wife, Shama Bibi, told The Tablet on 5 November.

Shahzad, 28, was the youngest of the six brothers belonging to a Christian family who had been working in a brick kiln, as practically bonded labourers, in a village 15 miles from the district headquarters of Kasur.

Sardar Mushtaq Gill, a Christian human-rights lawyer, told The Tablet from the village that when Shama, whose children are aged six to one and a half years old, was burning rubbish on 3 November, the manager of the brick kiln claimed to have spotted torn Qur’anic pages and alerted Muslim leaders.

An announcement of a desecration of the Qur’an was made over loudspeakers in neighbouring villages, Mr Gill said, and the couple wanted to flee but the owner of the kiln prevented them.

A mob of more than 1,000 ­people reached the village in ­tractor trolleys and motorbikes early on Tuesday morning.

“The mob pulled out the couple from the house after breaking its roof, tortured them, broke their legs and set them on fire,” Mr Gill told The Tablet.

Though police have arrested 37 people in connection with the crime, Mr Gill said that the police version of dead bodies being burned is not true. “They were burned alive,” he pointed out.

“A mob attacked a Christian couple after accusing them of dese­cration of the Holy Qur’an and later burned their bodies at a brick kiln where they worked,” local police station official Bin-Yameen told the AFP news agency.