by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - A Christian Pakistani girl was kidnapped and raped by five Muslims before being returned to her father a day later in a traumatized condition, ucanews.com reports.
Maria, the 15-year-old daughter of Jalal Masih, a local Christian laborer in Sheikhupura city of Pakistan’s Pubjab Province, was taken by five gun-toting Muslim men in a car on June 9th led by businessman Muhammad Sajid, then dropped on her family’s doorstep the next night after having endured severe abuse.
“The locals saw them abducting her at gunpoint in a vehicle. I reached his [Sajid’s] office but he was absent. We made contact the next day and he threatened to return her dead body if we informed the police,” Masih’s First Incident Report (FIR) at the local police station read.
“She was extremely scared.”
Legal Evangelical Association Development (LEAD), which is monitoring the trend of Christian girls abused by Muslim men in Pakistan, said 28 Christian girls were victims of kidnapping and rape between November 2018 and June 2019.
Most believe the isolated incidents of abuse are part of a wider assault on Pakistan's minority religious communities, which are mostly made up of Hindus and Christians, with forced marriage and conversion of young girls the chosen method for assimilating them into the majority Muslim culture.
“Only Christian and Hindu girls are victims in such cases. Crimes against religious minorities are increasing at a high scale in Pakistan,” LEAD national director Sardar Mushtaq Gill told ucanews.com.
As an indicator, the Pakistani province of southern Sidh alone saw over 1,000 such cases last year, according to estimates in the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
The 96% Muslim nation holds the infamous position of number 5 on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List 2019.