The cobbler slowly set up a permanent shop and a vegetable seller joined him. Overnight, it seemed to the community, their graveyard was turning into a local market. By 1999, over 50 shops had been constructed over graves. The crosses were replaced with the tea and milk shops and even small houses.

“Imagine, someone’s bathroom now sits on top of my ancestral graves,” Waseem Shakir tells us as he walks through the area, pointing to shops.

Waseem has been waging this war for well over a decade. The Christian community is poor and at times scared to raise their voice.

“Everyone recognises that there exists a Christian graveyard, which is no longer functioning as a graveyard for the Christian community, but rather land grabbers have taken hold of the land,” he says. “Everyone knows this, all the public bodies as well as the people who have the power and the jurisdiction to do something about it, yet no one has actually done anything to help the situation.”

Every week, Waseem surveys the area to see how much more encroachment has taken place.

“It was very hard to show to people, because one day, the grave is there and the next day someone has built a shop over the grave. The only solution that we have is that we can excavate the graves and then give them new sites for their bodies to be laid to rest. That is the only proof that we can muster”, he tells us dejectedly.

Waseem was kidnapped a few years ago and threatened several times by men associated with the land mafia, but that has not deterred him.

“Our community is not financially strong, so they don’t have the resources to fight against such people. I am also not financially strong, but I am a part of a unit and we collect funds through which we have employed a lawyer to fight on our behalf,” he says.

The Christian community across the region is facing similar intimidation and harassment. Whether it is false blasphemy accusations or encroachment upon their lands, they know they cannot speak up because the odds are stacked against them and those who do come to their rescue do so at their own peril.