Still no answers five years after teenage sisters murdered for reading the Bible

Report: Bibles for MIdeast

Five years ago, sisters Arifa, 17, and Akhtar, 19, were kidnapped and gunned down by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant terrorist group in Indian-controlled northern Kashmir, bordering Pakistan. The victims were the daughters of Gulam Nabi Dar, a salesman at a government ration shop.

Arifa and Akhtar

The girls did embroidery work and attended classes to learn to read and write at an adult education center run by an underground Bibles for Mideast outreach ministry. Though Muslims, the sisters believed in Jesus Christ, attended prayer services and had begun to read the New Testament.

Pastor Paul, Director of Bibles for Mideast and himself a convert from Islam, had visited the small community where the girls lived and shared his own story along with the message of the gospel. After the message, Arifa and Akhtar read Isaiah 53 together, declared their faith in Jesus Christ, and accepted Him as their Savior and Lord.

The very next evening militants barged into their home and forcibly took the girls. The terrorists may well have come to know about the underground ministries in the area and the young women’s involvement. Their bullet-riddled bodies were later found some distance away from their home. One had been shot in the left eye.

The teens’ family lived in two rooms, and their father had not yet come home from work when the assault happened. Police sources say the gunmen managed to escape under cover of darkness.

When the incident happened, two other women—aunts of the Arifa and Akhtar—were there, along with their younger brother and a young female relative who had come to visit the family. The women raised an alarm and ran after the gunmen, but stopped when the militants began threatening them. Their elder brother lived in another village with a maternal uncle.

Mourning over bodies of Arifa and Akhtar

“One of the gunmen had his face covered with a black scarf,” said younger brother Gulam Jeelani. “Only his eyes were visible. Two others followed him. They were speaking Urdu. One spoke a few words in Kashmiri.”

After the invasion and murder, local missionary Pastor Idris and his assistant were attacked with steel pipes, the pastor’s legs being broken. Pastor Paul and his family also suffered three brutal assaults and threats on their lives.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, or the 'Army of the Righteous', aim to create an Islamic state in South Asia and to ‘liberate’ Muslims in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

India has identified the group as the alleged masterminds behind the 2008 terror attack on the Indian financial capital of Mumbai that killed 166 people.