Just for sake of honesty. She isnt 11 yrs and nor does she have Down Syndrome. Nor was there any exodus of Christians from the ares. These frankly distortion sourced in the media mainly Church groups will only make matters worse, and are very very irresponsible.
"She is a completely normal girl," said Kamran Khan, cousin of the Masih family's landlord. As the largely male and grownup crowd gathered outside the house, a girl who said she knew Rifta said she did behave oddly – she talked to herself and walked in a peculiar way.
Guardian
Chaudhry said that they have also filed an application with a court in Islamabad to set up a medical panel to determine Rimsha’s age.
“We want the court to constitute a commission to judge the age of Rimsha, because, the church records show she is 11 years old only. While her age mentioned in the police report is 16,” he said.
Dawn
But one Christian neighbour told AFP that he had never left the area, not feeling any danger.
A senior official of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, told AFP that Christians who fled for shelter with relatives elsewhere in Islamabad were now gradually returning to Mehrabad.
AFP
Hammad Malik, a 23-year-old with a shaven head and bushy beard who is deemed a "scoundrel" by the Christian community, said he saw Rifta walking out of the tiny, single-room dwelling where she lived with her parents and sister at some time after 6pm. He said it was pure chance that he noticed her bundle.
"I looked at it but did not know exactly what it was but I could see it had words written in Arabic," he said.
He concedes that no one actually saw her burning anything as the offence allegedly happened inside the house, and she was caught while finding somewhere to throw away the remains. However, the local mullah claims there was a witness: another young girl who caught her in the act and then ran to the mosque to raise the alarm.
Guardian
A neighbor named Tasleem said her daughter saw Masih throwing away trash that included the burned religious material.
"If Christians burn our Koran, we will burn them," she told Reuters.
Reuters
It seems it was a misunderstanding involving neighbours that now has been blown out of proportion by the Media. In fact the neighbour at 1:30 (Probably Tasleem) is probably the one who is runing this charade, and probably put her daughter up to this.
Also the pages according to all reports were definitely not from the Quran but from some other book. The police based on the massive contradiction in the statements should not have registered the FIR. The two accusers(daughter of Tasleem the neighbour who went to the Mullah, and Hammad Malik) should have been taken into custody to verify their stories and if they were found to be false should have been booked for incitement and perjury.
"We protected the rest of the Christians," said Masih's landlord, Malik Amjad Mohammad. "People here support them."
Convictions are common, although the death sentence has never been carried out. Most convictions are thrown out on appeal, but mobs have killed many people accused of blasphemy.
Reuters
Note even here the law saved the community from a riot like Gojra. More sane elements stopped the mob from going to extremes. Thats why the British brought this law. How ever Nawaz and Zia's amendments have made it a mess.
What is happening is bad enough as it is without the Editors at ET adding their Masala. The are playing with people lives now.:angry_smile: ET editorial standards are ****. Just as Lakson has sent hundred and thousands of Pakistanis to death via Lung cancer its paper is trying to live to the same destructive potential.
The smarter thing would have been to stop the media from covering it for a few days and try to get the local DCO,or DPO try to settle this ridiculous non issue. Go to any tandoor or chips wala in the city and you will eventually find reused news papers,textbooks.
Now alot of damage has been done, by our berserk media.