Authorities in Pakistan have begun an investigation to identify and arrest members of a Muslim mob in northwestern Pakistan that ransacked a police station, snatched a man held there, and lynched him after he was accused of blasphemy after he reportedly desecrated a Quran.
A Muslim mob in Pakistan torches a police station and lynches a man after accusing him of blasphemy.
@_sayema and her friends will defend this for sure. https://t.co/tkKbikefXd— Anurag (@ianuragsaxena) June 21, 2024
The incident began in Swat Valley, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after the victim, identified as Mohammad Ismail, a tourist from Punjab province visiting the popular tourist destination for the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha, was handed over to the local police in the Madyan area.
Later, the announcement was made loudly through mosque loudspeakers, which incited an angry Muslim mob to gather and storm the police station. The mob seized the man, torched the police station, and violently beat the man to death before shooting him and burning his body.
"After initially rescuing the man from a crowd, the police took him to the station in Madyan, but announcements from mosque loudspeakers asked locals to come out," Mohammad Ali Gandapur, regional police of the Malakand division, said.
The last photo of this man before Burn pic.twitter.com/CsvdieSjb4
— Yogesh Kumar (@BeingHuman6767) June 20, 2024
Graphic videos of the violent incident shared on social media showed a frenzied mob dragging a naked and bloodied lifeless body through the streets before setting it on fire. The footage quickly went viral, sparking outrage among many Pakistani netizens who lamented the rampant religiously motivated lynchings and mob violence in the Muslim-majority country, where blasphemy carries a death sentence.
Zahidullah Khan, a police officer in the Swat district, said the mob’s violent actions resulted in eight police officers being injured. He also stated that heavy police presence was being deployed to manage the unrest. Gandapur also said that a case was registered against the mob organizers. Pakistani authorities have conducted an investigation to identify and apprehend them.
What kind of police is this ? A person was taken away from their custody station was burnt ? What did they do ?
— ماریہ علی (@MMariaaALI) June 20, 2024
International human rights groups have said that blasphemy accusations are often used to settle personal scores and intimidate religious minorities, such as Christians and Hindus. Last month, a mob in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province lynched an elderly Christian man after he was accused of desecrating pages of the Quran. The man, identified as 72-year-old Nazir Masih, later died in the hospital due to his injuries.
A Sri Lankan factory was violently lynched by an angry Muslim mob in Sialkot in December 2021, which soon became one of the most high-profile cases of religiously motivated mob violence in the country. Dozens of people were imprisoned following subsequent investigations, and six people were sentenced to death for their part in the lynching.
