KOTRI, Pakistan (UCAN) – Sattar Masih was having breakfast attired in his wedding suit as his cousins sang and danced, but their merriment was drowned out by a mob shouting against Christians and demanding his arrest.
Police handcuffed and dragged the Catholic bridegroom from the wedding house, decorated with colorful lights, in the Christian colony in Kotri, Sindh province. The handcuffs contrasted starkly with the mehndi , a colored paste applied to the groom's hands, and gaana, a bracelet of strings on his wrist.
On that April 13 morning, the former cook at church-run St. Elizabeth Hospital in nearby Hyderabad, 1,040 kilometers (about 645 miles) south of Islamabad, was charged at the police station under two sections of the Pakistan Penal Code.
Section 295-A mandates up to 10 years imprisonment for insulting the religious feelings of any group, while section 295-C punishes any remark or action deemed insulting to Prophet Muhammad with death or life imprisonment.
Sattar, 29, was arrested because photocopies of a piece of paper bearing insulting comments about Prophet Muhammad, along with a photo of Sattar and his address, were found in the mailbox of the local Muhammadi Mosque. About 20 local Muslims also found copies of the blasphemous note on their doorsteps.
Mosque leader Maulvi Umer Bakao announced the note at morning prayers on April 13, a Friday, the day Muslims gather at mosques for public prayer.
Sattar was released after some questioning but re-arrested later that day after about 80 Muslims protested at a railway gate. They blocked trains for a few hours and loudly demanded the death penalty for Sattar.
Sarfraz Ghauri, Sattar's cousin, told UCA News the incident is part of a conflict between Mushtaq Masih and Sattar, his nephew. "Mushtaq cursed the groom, saying dead bodies would be lifted on his wedding day," Ghauri said, recalling the day he and Sattar distributed wedding cards to relatives.
Police also took Mushtaq into custody for questioning, but he claims Sattar is the culprit. Though the two are related, "Masih" is not their family name but only a word used to identify someone as "Christian."
On April 19, when Catholic Church workers met the complainant, Muhammad Umar Pathan, and some Muslim teachers and students at Kotri police station, Pathan agreed no sane person would paste his profile on such a note. But he insisted he would not withdraw the charges until Sattar names the real culprit.
During a seminar on April 20 in Hyderabad, Bishop Max John Rodrigues of Hyderabad met Sattar's family and assured them of the church's support. The seminar on human rights education was organized by the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops' Conference.
Bishop Rodrigues later told UCA News that though he believes the case arose due to a family dispute, the "blasphemy laws are fatal for us."
The bishops' commission says eight people were charged under the blasphemy laws in four cases during the first four months of this year. From 1986 to 2006, it counted 833 people of various religions charged in 375 cases under those laws, which include section 295-B on blasphemy against the Koran.
Republished by Catholic Online with permission of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News), the world's largest Asian church news agency (www.ucanews.com).
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