Karachi, Pakistan - Nearly 21 months after the murder of a Christian student in Pakistan’s Punjab region, police have arrested a Muslim cleric suspected of torturing the young man so that he would convert to Islam.
Umar Hayat was arrested last week under charges that he and two other Islamic seminary members in the town of Toba Tek Singh had tortured Javed Anjum for five days until the Christian “converted” to Islam. Another suspect, Maulvi Ghulam Rasool, was re-arrested in November after Pakistan’s Supreme Court revoked his bail.
Police officer Rana Habib ur-Rehman confirmed Hayat’s capture but refused to provide details of the arrest. According to one source in Toba Tek Singh speaking on condition of anonymity, Muslim clerics have been campaigning for Hayat’s release over the past week, visiting the police station and pressuring officers in charge of the case.
Judge Javed Iqbal Warraich ordered police protection for Anjum’s father, Pervez Masih, and his lawyer, after Masih filed a formal complaint that armed members of Rasool and Hayat’s madrassa (Islamic school) were harassing him at court hearings.
“The main object of these clerics is to harass the complainant [Masih] and me and thereby to force [us] to withdraw the case,” Masih’s lawyer, Khalil Tahir Sindhu, wrote in the January 7 petition for police security. Sindhu complained that the clerics had never been checked for weapons when entering the courtroom and that he felt “genuine apprehension” for his life “at the hands of these clerics.”
According to Sindhu, two constables have been assigned to accompany Masih and himself to and from court. Speaking from Toba Tek Singh after yesterday’s trial hearing, the lawyer confirmed that approximately 40 Muslim clerics and students from Rasool’s seminary had gathered once again outside the courthouse.
Though the madrassa members no longer physically or verbally threaten Masih and Sindhu, the prosecution continues to arrange for local Christian religious and political leaders to accompany them to the trial.
“I usually go with Mr. Khalil Tahir because there is always a danger,” Father James Paul, a Catholic priest from Faisalabad, told Compass as he returned with Sindhu from yesterday’s hearing. Ejaz Jacob Gill of the District Assembly, who accompanied Sindhu to a hearing on Saturday (January 14), agreed that Sindhu and Masih may still face problems from the Muslim clerics.