Shazia Imran, a forty-year-old widow – whose husband died in circumstances that have never been clarified – was killed by four men because she did not want to convert to Islam and marry Mani Gujjar. Activist Nadia Stephen: “Women belonging to religious minorities should not be victims of kidnapping, rape and murder just because they refuse to abandon their religion.”
Lahore () – She was killed because she did not want to convert to Islam to marry a man who wanted her. Four Muslims kidnapped, raped and murdered Shazia Imran. Widowed, forty years old, Shazia was a Christian, and the main suspect in the kidnapping, murder and attempted concealment of the body with acid is Mani Gujjar, a suitor who tried to force her to convert so that she would marry him.
Shazia worked in a nursery at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and there she would have met the man who presumably killed her. On the night of Tuesday, June 6, when her shift ended, she did not return home. Relatives searched for the woman, mother of three children: Salman (16), Abrar (6), and Aliza (7), but without success. In the end they called the police, because Shazia Imran’s family is convinced that her husband, beaten to death 18 months ago, was not attacked by “thugs”, as the police dismissed the fact, but by the same people who killed them. Shazia.
Assault to the point of rape as a “coercive method” of conversion, especially of women belonging to religious minorities, is nothing new in Pakistan. And the case of Shazia, who in the face of her refusal was raped and murdered, has unleashed a new wave of fear in recent weeks, but also anger and protests in the country’s Catholic minority. Especially since the family recounted that she had entrusted Mani Gujjar’s urgent threats to a sister-in-law to convert and marry him.
Of the four defendants, the police only arrested Mani. His brother and two cousins who allegedly participated in the gang rape and murder remain at large.
The president of Voice for Justice – Pakistan’s first digital portal created to provide legal assistance to all – Joseph Jansen, stated that he was concerned about the episode and called for strict action against the perpetrators. “The persecution against religious minorities must be stopped as soon as possible,” added Jansen, and the authorities should adopt effective measures to guarantee their safety within society and not turn them into “second class” citizens. Especially as this type of violence against Christian girls and women” is increasing at an alarming rate. Women’s rights activist Nadia Stephen also noted that “religious minority women and girls should not be targeted for abduction, rape and murder for the sole reason that they refuse to give up their religion”.
