Rallygoers for a political party in Pakistan beat to death a participant for allegedly making a blasphemous speech, police said yesterday.
Local police officer Iqbal Khan said that Maulana Nigar Alam, 40, was killed on Saturday night by demonstrators in the Sawaldher village of Mardan District, northeast of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Police said a man Alam was asked to deliver the concluding prayer at a rally organized by former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party when the crowd took offense to his comments.
“Some words of his prayer were deemed blasphemous by a number of protesters, leading to torture and death at the hands of the angry mob,” Iqbal Khan said.
Witnesses said the police deputy on duty at the rally attempted to save the man by locking him up in a nearby shop, but the mob broke through the door and attacked him.
He managed to flee the scene, but a mob tracked him down to a relative’s house, police said.
“A group of individuals climbed over the wall, barged inside, and beat him to death with sticks and batons,” district police chief Najeeb-ur-Rehman said.
“The mob was so agitated that it became extremely challenging for the police to even recover the body,” he said.
Videos circulating on social media showed people pushing the accused man to the ground, kicking him and beating him with batons.
Police took the body into custody and said an investigation was under way.
Accusing people of blasphemy in Pakistan is common.
Last month, Pakistani police arrested and later released a Chinese national named Tian (田), who was working in Pakistan on a dam project and was accused by the locals of blasphemy.
In February, an angry mob entered a police station in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, snatched a person accused of blasphemy from his cell and killed him.
In 2021, a Sri Lankan national, Priyantha Diyawadanage, who was working as a factory manager in Pakistan, was killed by an angry mob over allegations of blasphemy.
In 2017, Pakistani student Mashal Khan was killed by a mob on the premises of his university over allegations of posting blasphemous content online.
Additional reporting by AFP
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