October 7, 2024
Staff Report
LAHORE
A man in Faisalabad has been arrested on charges of alleged blasphemy. This comes as the country continues to witness a surge in blasphemy cases.
According to the first information report (FIR) registered with the Satiana Police Station in Faisalabad, on October 6, the complainant, a co-worker in a garment factory, claimed that he found ‘blasphemous content’ on the suspect’s mobile phone which the suspect allegedly forwarded to others. Acting on the complaint, the police arrested the suspect and seized his phone. The accused has been moved to an undisclosed location.
New tide of blasphemy allegations
Blasphemy charges have been on the rise across the country lately, with two high-profile cases ending in the deaths of those accused, last month. Dr. Shahnawaz Kanhbar, charged with blasphemy, was killed by a police officer in Umerkot, Mirpurkhas, while Abdul Ali, also facing blasphemy accusations, was killed in Quetta Cantt Jail. This case comes as an addition to an already rising tide of blasphemy allegations.
Recently investigative journalist Ahmad Noorani claimed in an in depth report, that a group has been actively filing false blasphemy cases against people. His report highlights that data from three of Pakistan’s 116 prisons show nearly 400 young people are currently incarcerated on blasphemy charges, with 70 per cent of the accused being educated young men and women. Noorani’s report further alleges that this group operates with the collusion of certain officials from the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). Another one of Noorani’s reports also brought to light the custodial deaths of six different blasphemy accused who were under trial and in prison. This included one woman.
In September, a report from the Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) revealed that those accused of blasphemy languish in detention for years. Over a six-month period in 2022, CFJ’s TrialWatch initiative monitored 24 blasphemy cases in Lahore’s courts.
“In more than half of the cases monitored, the accused were detained during the trial (15 out of 24) and, startingly, in 17 out of the 24 cases, or 71 per cent of all observed cases, there was no progress at all during the 6-month monitoring period,” the report noted.
“In fact, out of a total of 252 hearings across all 24 cases, 217 resulted in adjournments with the biggest reason for adjournment being the absence of prosecution witnesses or the complainant(s) (60 out of the 217 adjournments or 28 per cent).” The report highlighted that in half of the monitored cases, the blasphemy defendants had spent more than four and a half years in detention.