On Sunday, the 23rd of May, thirty-two-year-old Arif Masih was kidnapped and murdered in Tariqabad village, located in Pakistan’s Punjab Province.

“Two men from Gujjar community raided our house and forcefully took him on a motorcycle,” Rizwan Masih, Arif’s brother, reported to the police. “About an hour later, they threw him in the market at our front door. He was semi-conscious, hospitalized and died the same night.”

According to UCAN, Arif was attacked because he reported an incident of harassment to local police.

“Last week the accused physically harassed our sister,” Rizwan said. “My brother had been receiving death threats since we reported the incident at the police station. He was being forced for a truce.”

“Arif Masih was murdered for demanding justice,” Akmal Bhatti, Chairman of the Minorities Alliance Pakistan, told UCAN. “The local village assembly scolded the Christian family for filing the case and threatened them with a social boycott for pursuing it.”

Local police initially registered Arif’s death as a suicide. However, 300 Christian protested the initial report and called on police to investigate the death as a murder. Following the three-hour protest, police finally recorded Arif’s death as a murder.

Source: Persecution.org