Fetching drinking water from a mosque in Pakistan's Punjab province landed a family of poor farmers from the minority Hindu community in trouble as some people tortured and held them hostage for “violating the sanctity” of their place of worship, a media report said on Monday.

Alam Ram Bheel, a resident of Punjab's Rahimyar Khan city, was picking raw cotton along with his other family members, including his wife, in a field.

Bheel said when the family went outside a nearby mosque to fetch drinking water from a tap, some local landlords beat them up, the Dawn newspaper reported.

When the family was returning home after unloading the picked cotton, the landlords held them hostage at their dera (outhouse) and tortured them again for “violating the sanctity” of the mosque, it said.

The police did not register a case as the attackers were related to a local parliamentarian of Prime Minister Imran Khan's ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, Bheel said. Protesting the police apathy, Bheel held a sit-in outside the police station along with another clan member Peter John Bheel.

Peter, also a member of the district peace committee, said that they approached ruling PTI lawmaker Javed Warriach who helped them lodge a case on Friday. Peter requested other members of the district peace committee to call an emergency meeting over the issue but they did not take the matter seriously, the report said.

PTI's south Punjab minority wing secretary general Yodhister Chohan said that incident was in his knowledge but due to the influence of a ruling party's MP, he preferred to stay away.

District Police Officer Asad Sarfraz said that he was looking into the matter.