Toba Tek Singh (AsiaNews) - A strange incident has traumatised the Christian community in Toba Tek Singh (Punjab province). Eight armed men, dressed like police officers, abducted Rev Victor Samuel, the local pastor, on 7 July. The community, which has not heard from him since then, is scared because police neither denied nor confirmed the involvement of fellow agents in his disappearance. For Fr Bonnie Mendes, the incident is "shameful" because "the family, community and nation must know if the state is involved, and, if it is, why it abducted Rev Samuel."
The clergyman was in his office the day he was seized. At one point, four armed men dressed like police officers suddenly came into his office, with a search warrant issued by a Lahore judge.
The alleged agents told Rev Samuel that his American-born former wife, April, had laid a complaint against him concerning some jewels he was supposed to return to her.
The men questioned him about his marriage, checked his computer and took him and his brother, Sikander Samuel, to a police station on a jeep. However, on the way, the kidnappers let the brother go and drove off with the clergyman. Since then, his fate is unknown.
The family went to the Toba Sek Singh police station where they filed a missing person report. A local police officer, Ahsan Raza, contacted the reverend's former wife who denied filing any complaint against the clergyman. Instead, she told the officer that she was happily re-married and that she held no personal grudge against Rev Samuel.
The clergyman's brother Sikander confirmed the woman's statement. "My brother married April in 2007," he told AsiaNews. "After three years, she went back to America, only to return to Pakistan the following year. They got a divorce and she marry Kashif Masih, one of Victor's friends, and now lives in the city of Sahiwal. Their separation was consensual, without any animosity. Their daughter, my nice, lives with her mother in Sahiwal."
"Had they been real police agents, they would have brought him before a court within 24 hours," Fr Mendes explained. "If he was abducted, police should conduct a real investigation to tell the country who the kidnappers are. Whatever the case, police have failed. Now Pakistan has another missing person."