Shama and Shahzad were a married Pakistani Christian couple who worked as laborers at a brick kiln in a remote village in Pakistan’s heartlands. In late October of 2014, Shahzad’s father died, and over the following days, he and Shama commenced the process of sorting through his belongings. As is common in rural Pakistan, they burned some things that were no longer usable. Among these items were taveezes and zaichas—“pieces of cloth or paper bearing inscriptions that people in the [Indian] subcontinent … often use as talismans or charms.” Shahzad’s father had spent his retirement making these, which bore Arabic writing, and his daughter-in-law, pregnant with a fourth child, was burning some of them a few days after his death.

Meanwhile, Shahzad had apparently been involved in a dispute with a coworker over an unpaid debt. This coworker saw Shama burning the taveezes and zaichas, and he began to spread the rumor that Shama had been burning the Qur’an. Within the day, most of the village knew of the matter, and prominent people were spreading word to nearby villages that the Qur’an had been desecrated. The couple and their family were aware of the rumblings against them, but not of their extent; they did not consider themselves to be in serious danger.

“I had said that what’s the problem? Bring your four people, we’ll bring ours, and we’ll sit down and talk it out.” - Iqbal, Shahzad’s brother, on the threat to Shahzad and Shama

The following morning, people from several villages had convened in Shahzad’s and Shama’s village, including multiple local clerics, who apparently wrote a fatwa demanding that the couple “be burned the same way that they burned the [holy book].” In the early morning, the local mosque’s loudspeakers blared, exhorting listeners to go to the kiln and avenge the insult. Shahzad and Shama, on their walk to work, brought their one-year-old daughter with them, but when they arrived, their supervisor locked the three away in a room; whether he did so for good or ill intentions is not clear, but this is where they stayed while a mob, which onlookers estimated at several hundred to several thousand people, gathered outside.

Police had been called out to the village, but again for unclear purposes; in any case, they did not intervene when they arrived. One officer claimed that he tried to rein in the mob, but they were “too crazed.” This statement, at least, seems accurate: the crowd soon started banging on the door to the room in which Shahzad and Shama were locked with their infant daughter, trying to break in, and some even climbed onto the roof to try to break through from above. Soon enough, the lock on the door broke, and the mob dragged the couple out. Amid the confusion, their daughter was rescued by her aunt.

“Shama was covered in wounds, and she had blood on her face and arms. It was clear that — you know how people look like after a stampede of thousands has passed over them? That is what it looked like.” - Malik Abdul Aziz, journalist on the scene

In the ensuing chaos, Shahzad and the pregnant Shama were brutally beaten; some eyewitnesses claimed Shahzad was quickly beaten to death, and the atrocity was witnessed by their oldest son, Suleman, who was around five years old. Shama, certainly, was alive and conscious for the entire time she took the mob’s abuse. Her struggling could not save her as the mob threw her and Shahzad into the furnace, but to stop her resistance, the crowd placed a sheet of heavy metal upon her. She burned alive next to her unconscious or already-dead husband, powerless to stop it.

This case attracted attention across Pakistan, and many dozens were arrested for participation in the murders. On the night after the murder, the couple’s family took the remains authorities had recovered from the kiln—little more than a small pile of charred bone pieces—and quietly laid them to rest. In the days following, a makeshift memorial appeared at the site of the couple’s deaths.

"Suleman had bad dreams for a long time. He would often wake up screaming for his parents." - Mukhtiar Masih, Shama's father and guardian of her children

The three children Shahzad and Shama left behind—Suleman, Sonia, and Poonam—left for the city shortly after the attack and no longer live in the village. Today, Shama's father Mukhtiar has custody of them.