Pakistan: Hindu family tortured, held hostage for fetching water from Punjab's mosque

In another harrowing incident in the long string of attacks and oppression against the minority community in Pakistan, a Hindu family was subjected to public torture after they were caught collecting water from a local mosque’s tap in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Enraged residents from Basti Kahoor Khan in Rahim Yar Khan district held the clueless family hostage and tortured them for allegedly "violating the sanctity" of the holy mosque, ANI on Monday reported, citing Islamabad’s publication Dawn. Pakistani citizens punished the family for entering into the mosque premises, otherwise a public place, and for collecting water from the Islamic religious premises. 

A family member later told Dawn that one of the members Alam Ram Bheel had been working at the raw cotton field along with their wife and other members of the family when he was struck with thirst after the tiresome day at labour. That’s when the family showed up outside a nearby mosque to fetch some drinking water from the tap, but locals, who took notice beat them up mercilessly.

“The family was returning home after unloading the picked cotton, the villagers held them hostage at their outhouse and tortured them again,” ANI reported, citing Dawn.

Assaulters associated with Tehreek-e-Insaf parliamentarian, reports Pak media 

Victim Bheel told the Islamabad newspaper that the airport police station refused to register the case as the attackers were associated with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf parliamentarian. The Bheel family was allowed to go after hours of the torturous ordeal with the intervention of some of the locals of Basti Kahoor Khan. 

When the police in Pakistan refused to log a formal complaint about the Hindu family, victim Ram Bheel held a sit-in protest outside the police station along with another family member Peter Jhon Bheel, Islamabad’s Dawn reported. Jhon, a member of the district peace committee, told the paper that the family approached PTI MNA Javed Warriach for lodging an FIR under sections 506, 154, 379, 148, and 149 of the Pakistan Penal Code last Friday. PTI’s south Punjab minority wing secretary-general Yodhister Chohan reportedly said that the incident was in his knowledge but he would prefer to stay away due to the “influence of a ruling party.” 

District Police Officer Asad Sarfraz was quoted as saying that he was looking into the incident, while the area's Deputy Commissioner Dr Khuram Shehzad told the Islamabad reporters that they would be meeting the family on Monday, 20 September and until then no action will be taken. Farooq Rind, a senior lawyer and former district bar president, told Dawn that he was acquainted with the minority Bheel family that lived in the Basti Kahoor for several years. He condemned the attack saying that the Hindu family was extremely hard working. She used to work at farm and was extremely poor, he added.

(With inputs from ANI)