BANGLADESH: PASTOR’S WIFE GANG-RAPED, HOME ROBBED

Influential Muslim villagers, local media said to falsely blame Christians, Hindu.

VENNABARI, Bangladesh, January 20 (Compass Direct News) – The pastor of a Baptist church in this village about a 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Dhaka said that earlier this month local Muslims tied him and his wife up, robbed his living quarters on the church property and gang-raped his wife. The Rev. Shankar Hazra, 55, of Chaksing Baptist church in Gopalganj district, said that before leaving, the assailants desecrated the church building. The night of the attack, the pastor said, he and his wife went out to a toilet outside their home at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 6. “Suddenly a man loomed up from the darkness and thrust the snout of a homemade rifle at my chest and told me to keep mum, otherwise both of us would be killed,” Rev. Hazra said. “Around seven to eight people swooped on us and tied me and my wife. They blindfolded my wife and took her inside the house.” After the assailants left, Rev. Hazra managed to untie himself and found his wife lying unconscious on the bed, he said. He added that villagers tried to implicate non-Muslims and portray the attack as resulting from internal conflicts among Christians. Police, influential villagers and local Muslim-owned media are trying to conceal likely anti-Christian motives for the crime, he said, by falsely accusing two Christians and a Hindu of participating – and labeling a local Baptist pastor as the “mastermind” of the attack.