police in Pakistan They said a middle-aged man was stoned to death by a mob in a remote village after he allegedly desecrated the Qur’an.
A local mosque servant said he saw the man burning the Islamic Quran inside the mosque on Saturday night and told others before reporting to the police, according to police spokesman Chaudhry Imran. The accident occurred in a village in Khaniwal district in Punjab province.
Omran said police rushed to the scene where they found a man surrounded by an angry crowd. Officer Muhammad Iqbal and two of his subordinates attempted to detain the man but the group began throwing stones at them, seriously injuring Iqbal and slightly injuring the other two officers.
Omran said that the identity of the man accused of infidelity is not yet known.
Munwar Gujar, the head of the Tulamba police station, said reinforcements were rushed to the mosque but they did not arrive before the mob stoned the man to death and hung his body from a tree.
Mian Muhammad Ramadan, the mosque’s curator, said he saw smoke inside the building next to his house, and rushed to investigate. He found a burnt Quran and saw a man trying to burn another Quran. He said people started arriving for evening prayers while he was yelling for the man to stop.
Witnesses said that a team of police that arrived in the village before the stoning began, detained a man but that the mob snatched him away from them and beat up the police as they tried to rescue him.
Later, more officers and policemen arrived at the scene and took control, and transported the body, which was taken to the hospital for autopsy.
Gujar said investigators were examining video footage to try to identify the attackers.
Assistant Prime Minister Imran Khan for Religious Affairs, Allama Tahir Mahmood Al-Ashrafi, condemned the killing and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. He said no one has the right to take the law for themselves, even if the suspect has been involved in a crime, including blasphemy.
The murder comes after Extrajudicial executions in December A Sri Lankan manager of a sporting goods factory in Sialkot in Punjab province has been accused by workers of blasphemy.
Mob attacks on people accused of infidelity are common in the conservative Muslim nation. International and local rights groups say accusations of blasphemy are often used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores. Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan.
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