A Christian mother of seven, 40-year-old Shaheen Bibi, who was kidnapped, raped, sold into marriage and threatened with death last August if she did not convert to Islam, was released last week.
When she refused to convert and accept the marriage, traffickers had threatened to kill her unless her father, Manna Masih, paid a ransom of 100,000 rupees ($1,170) by Saturday, March 5, she told Compass after her release. Shaheen Bibi, a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Lahore, said she was kidnapped in August 2010 after she met a woman named Parveen on a bus on her way to work.
Shaheen Bibi and her father (Image: Compass Direct News)
Shaheen Bibi's father asked the police to take action, but they did nothing as her abductors had taken her to a remote area between the cities of Rahim Yar Khan and Sadiqabad, which was considered a no-go area as it was controlled by dangerous criminals. Masih then sought legal assistance from the Community Development Initiative (CDI), a human rights sister organization to the European Centre for Law and Justice in Pakistan. CDI staff officer Haroon Tazeem, Masih and police went to Khan Baila near Rahim Yar Khan and at midnight on Sunday, March 6, the rescue team managed to get hold of Shaheen Bibi, the CDI source said. The kidnappers handed her over on the condition that no further legal action would be taken against them, but the rescue team told the abductors that those who had sold her in Lahore would be prosecuted. Chained to a tree outside a house last week, Shaheen Bibi had lifted her eyes in prayer, seen a cross in the sky and had been comforted in the expectation that God's mighty hand would free her, even though her father had no money for ransom, she said.
