In June 2009, Noreen was harvesting falsa berries with a group of other women farmhands in a field in Sheikhupura.
She was asked at one point to fetch water from a nearby well; she complied but stopped to take a drink with an old metal cup she had found lying next to the well.
A neighbor of Noreen, Musarat, who had been involved in a running feud with Noreen's family saw her and angrily told her that it was forbidden for a Christian to drink water from the same utensil from which Muslims drink, and that some of the other workers considered her to be unclean because she was a Christian, referring to the caste system in Pakistan.
