More than a dozen men – armed with batons, axes and pistols – entered Jhoora Masih’s house in Bagri village on the eve of June 16, he says, and set his household things on fire. They also insulted the women of the house, tore their clothes, and injured Jhoora with wounds that include a gunshot wound on his hand.
“The police are not interested in arresting the suspects,” human rights activist Khalid Shahzad told me. “He had a bullet injury, but he was not even hospitalized. This is a sign that the state machinery is acting with a bias.”
The Saddar Police Station was initially unwilling to register a case against the suspects. But after increasing pressure from rights activists and community leaders, the case was registered on June 18. Jhoora says no arrests have been made, and the suspects, who live next doors, are harassing his family.
“My family and I labored in the fields, but when it was time to divide the profits, they refused to give me the Rs 26,000 they owed me,” Jhoora said about the suspects. “Every time I demanded the money, they beat me up.” He said the same thing happened on June 15, after which he informed the police. “The police pressured me to make to reconcile with them,” he told me.
Later that night, around 2am, 15 men armed with axes, batons and firearms scaled the boundary wall and entered his house. “They called us names and said we had insulted them in the entire village. They fired a shot in the air and another in my left hand. Then they beat my wife and daughters and humiliated them by touching their private parts,” Jhoora said. “The police arrived and saw us all injured and bruised, but they were still not willing to register a case. It became only possible after several Christians from Lahore arrived and pressured the police.”
The Deputy Superintendent of Police in the precinct, Mirza Arif Rasheed, said the assailants belonged to the Arain caste and had done great injustice to the poor Christians by not paying them the due compensation for their labor, and then beating them. “But there were injuries on both sides,” he asserted. “The Christians put their own household articles on fire to implicate the Arains. We are investigating if the Arains actually entered the house.”
Khalid Shahzad, the human rights activist who is observing the case, says the assailants went straight to the police after breaking into Jhoora’s home, to claim they didn’t enter the house. “The police have ordered their medical examination, and when there will be no pressure on them, they will record a counter-version to force the Christians to make a compromise,” Khalid believes.
In July 2009, a very similar fight took place between a Christian family and Muslims landlords of Bahmaniwala village in Kasur after which more than 110 houses of Christians were looted and ransacked. In that incident, Sardar Masih was beaten up by the local landlords, who then went to the police and said Sardar had attacked and wounded them. When a medical report didn’t support their version of events, they began a rumor that Christians had blasphemed against Islam.