Pak Christian boy's body found with torture marks

As the furore over the arrest of a minor Christian girl over blasphemy charge is yet to die down, the body of an 11-year-old boy from the minority community, bearing torture marks, was found in Faisalabad city of Pakistan's Punjab province on Wednesday, the police said.

Samuel Yaqoob, a resident of the Christian Colony of Faisalabad, 100 km from Lahore, was brutally tortured before being killed.

He had been missing since the evening of August 20, when he had stepped out of his home to go to the market. Yaqoob's burnt body was found near a drain of the Christian Colony today. His lips, nose and belly were cut off and he could hardly be recognised as his body was badly burnt, relatives said.

The boy's family recognised him from a mark on his forehead. Police sent the body for an autopsy. Yaqoob's family and other residents of the Christian Colony staged a protest and demanded the arrest of his killers.

Asia Bibi, the boy's mother, told police that her family had no enmity with anyone in the area. "We neither received any phone call for ransom nor were we told that Samuel had committed blasphemy," she said.