A young, Christian woman in the Pakistani city of Karachi became the victim of a grisly crime after she refused marriage to a Muslim man.
Sunita Masih was on her way to work on the morning of Feb. 1 when her neighbor, Kamran Allah Bux, threw acid onto her face, leaving it brutally scarred.
According to the Christian Post, the 19-year-old Masih suffered burns to 20 percent of her body, with the acid causing excruciating pain.
“My eyes, face, arms and legs started burning as soon as Kamran threw the acid on me,” the young woman told police.
“The pain was so excruciating that I collapsed on the road.”
Sunita’s uncle, John Masih, revealed that Bux had previously attempted to pressure Sanita Masih into a relationship, in which she would give up her Christian faith and convert to Islam.
“He would try to force her to renounce her Christian faith, assuring her that he would marry her once she became a Muslim, but she refused to surrender to his illegitimate demands,” the uncle explained, according to the Post.
“Sunita had informed her siblings about Kamran’s harassment, and they had repeatedly complained to his parents, urging them to stop him, but that did not work.”
Despite registering a complaint about Bux’s efforts to forcibly court Sunita Masih, the local police failed to act on it.
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After the crime, Assistant Sub-Inspector Sagheer Ahmed of the local police brought Bux into custody for the crime of causing hurt with a corrosive substance.
“We obtained his two-day physical remand from a court during which he confessed to the heinous crime,” Ahmed said.
“In his statement, Kamran claimed that he had fallen in love with Sunita and had attacked her with acid in retaliation after she rejected his marriage proposal.”
Pakistan has a long and unfortunate history of violence against women, especially those who come from Christian or other religious minorities within the majority Muslim nation.
“Minority girls face harassment and intimidation from Muslim men every day, but their pleas for help go unheeded,” Mary James Gill of the Center for Law and Justice said.
“Who is responsible for ensuring the protection of lives and faith of these minority girls in this Islamic republic?”
Between 2007 and 2022, nearly 1,500 acid attacks were reported.
Across the border in India, Christians are also facing local persecution in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, where Hindu extremists are driving followers of Christ from their homes.
As reported by Christianity Today, a mob of Hindus attacked nearly 15 Christians in early January in what has become an all too common example of anti-Christian sentiment.
“Accusing us of following a foreign religion, and leaving the tribal culture, they gave us a choice either to recant our faith or leave our homes and our village, never to return,” local Christian Aytu Ram Dhruw said.
Nigeria is another country where Christians are facing death and removal.
Muslim Fulani herdsman killed five Christians on Jan. 22, another example of protracted violence between the two groups within Nigeria.
