A Christian Couple burnt Alive by Muslim Mob
The venue: Chak 59, Kot Radha Kishan, District Kasur, Punjab, Pakistan. The spectacle: a mob of thousands against a Christian couple. The charge: alleged desecration of the Holy Quran.
Shama, 24, and Shahzad Masih, 26, were brutalised by a frenzied crowd who, after tearing their clothes, breaking their bones, dragging them across the village, threw them in the burning furnace of the brick kiln where the latter worked. Shama, a mother of three, was four months pregnant. Shama, eyewitnesses say, was wearing clothes that did not burn easily, so her clothes were torn off her, and she was wrapped into cotton: cotton burns easily. And she had to be burnt. The mob had decided.
Their six-year-old son told the media about the hell that no child, no grown-up, is meant to witness. That many, many people beat up his amma, abba. That his amma, abba were tied behind a tractor and dragged through the village before they were burnt.
Allegedly, a few pages of the Holy Quran were found outside the couple’s house. The village clergy were informed, and before asking the ‘culprits’ for any explanation, the atrocity had been announced through loudspeakers, the rage fanned, and the hysteria suitably orchestrated.
The brutal, deadly attack on the couple prompted outrage in Pakistan, shedding light on the plight of Christians, who make up less than 2 percent of the conservative Islamic country’s population of 170 million.