Sisters' Stories

Women

• Young Girl Forcibly Converted

  

  On the night of February 11th, ten-year-old Laiba Suhail was abducted from her home in the Faisalabad District of Punjab. The Christian girl's captor has been identified as Muhammad Mohsin Shah – a man who is well known in the area for abducting and forcibly converting girls from religious minorities.

• Rape Victim Pressured to Drop Charges

  

  Two men have been arrested for repeatedly sexually assaulting a Christian woman and blackmailing her after recording the ordeal. The 26-year-old woman, who remains unnamed, has been facing pressure to drop all charges against her assailants.

• Christian Couple Beaten and Threatened

  

  A Christian couple in Uppaladinni, Karnataka, was recently beaten for their faith and threatened with death if they continued to practise Christianity. The attack on Vijayalakshmi Chavhan and her husband Ashok happened on January 10th, the day after Vijayalakshmi was accused by several media organizations of conducting forced religious conversions.

• Parents Accused in Kidnapping Case

  

  In a situation that has become far too common in Pakistan, a young Christian girl was abducted on August 22nd and then forcibly converted to Islam and married against her will to the abductor. The victim, Samreen Aftab, was a ninth-grade student at a school in Jaranwala where her father is employed as the principal. According to her father, Aftab Joseph, she was abducted by a Muslim man named Muhammad Amir.

• Christian Tutor Reported by Her Husband

  

  Liu Cui is a member of the Lishi Christian Church in China, which operates a co-op school group for children, despite ongoing harassment from government agencies that want to restrict the religious education of minors. On October 11th, Liu went to the school to help tutor six students from four different families.

• Couple Released on Bail Due to Lack of Evidence

  

  On September 8th, Kiran Bibi answered the door to a man who said he noticed pages of the Quran apparently falling from the rooftop of her family's home. When she invited him to investigate this further by going up to the rooftop, they found a bag with loose papers in it. Kiran stated that the bag had been given to her by a Muslim employer to sell to a scrap vendor, and that her children may have unintentionally thrown some of the pages down without realizing their significance.

• Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Nayab Gill's Case

  

  In May 2021, 13-year-old Nayab Gill was forcibly converted and married to a 30-year-old Muslim man named Saddam Hayat. Despite court challenges, custody was given to her "husband." (For more details, go to this report.)A year later, reports surfaced indicating that the young Christian girl may have been sold to someone else as a bride (details here). With support from various advocacy organizations, Nayab's parents have continued to fight for justice on behalf of their daughter.

• Pastor and Family Detained; Multiple Other Christians Arrested

  

  A pastor, his wife and their three-year-old son have been jailed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after holding a prayer service at their home in Haidargarh on July 30th. Pastor Harendra Singh and his wife Priya were arrested and remanded on allegations of "luring innocent people to Christianity." Because both of these parents were detained, they had to take their young son with them to prison.

• Woman Killed for Refusing to Convert to Islam

  

  A Christian widow and mother of three was abducted, raped, murdered, and doused with acid after she refused to convert to Islam and marry one of her abductors. Shazia Imran worked at LUMS University in Lahore, Pakistan. On June 6th, at the end of her work shift, she failed to return home. Worried family members searched throughout the night for her and, the next day, they filed a police report. The police contacted the family that same day to notify them that a body was found in the morning. The family was able to identify the body as their missing loved one.

• Christian Woman Slain by Husband

  

  After hearing the "Good News" of the Gospel about a month ago from missionaries visiting her local village, Nga, a 42-year-old Vietnamese woman, turned in faith to Christ. She was the first in her village to respond to God's message of salvation, which had been presented to her by the evangelizing Christians. However, unlike Nga, her husband Vu was not open to hearing the missionaries' message.