Christian couple beaten and burned alive by Muslim mob in Pakistan after “blasphemy†accusation
http://barnabasfund.org/US/Christian-couple-beaten-and-burned-alive-by-Muslim-mob-in-Pakistan-after-blasphemy-accusation.html"A Christian couple, Shehzad Masih and his pregnant wife Shama Bibi, were killed by a Muslim mob in Pakistan on Tuesday after being accused of desecrating the Quran.
The couple were beaten and burned alive in a brick kiln after local media reported that they had burned pages of the Quran and thrown them in a rubbish bin. The mob attack was incited by the mullah of the local mosque; announcements were made over mosque loudspeakers asking Muslim villagers to gather at the kiln.
The incident occurred in a village near the town of Kot Radha Kishan, which is around 60 kilometres south-west of Lahore. An angry mob descended at around 7.00 a.m. on 4 November on the home where the couple lived with their three children.
The assailants beat the couple with clubs, stripped them naked and paraded them around the brick kiln. When the couple could no longer walk on their fractured legs, the mob burned the Christians alive in the kiln furnace.Five
policemen who tried to intervene to save Shehzad and Shama
were unable to stop the 600-strong mob. Some of the attackers had climbed onto the roof of the room where the couple had taken refuge and broke through it in order to drag the couple out.
Days before the attack, a Muslim co-worker at the brick kiln where the couple worked as bonded labourers claimed that he saw Shama burn rough papers, including pages of the Quran, when she collected the belongings of Shehzad’s father, who had passed away days before. Local media reports state that Shama is illiterate and so could not have known what she was burning, if the incident did take place.
Some reports have suggested that the accusation of blasphemy may have had an underlying motive related to a financial dispute between the couple and their Muslim employer, Muhammad Yousaf Gujjar. Pakistan’s “blasphemy laws†are often misused to settle personal grudges, and Christians are particularly vulnerable to false accusation by Muslims."More
http://barnabasfund.org/US/Christian-couple-beaten-and-burned-alive-by-Muslim-mob-in-Pakistan-after-blasphemy-accusation.html