Alleged Blasphemer’s Arrest Leaves Hub City in a Chaos

Ayaz Khan

Hub: Police arrested an alleged blasphemer belonging to Hindu community from Hub district Lasbela on Tuesday on a complaint that he had allegedly committed blasphemy while sharing blasphemous content on social media.

The 35-year-old Prakash runs a grocery shop in Rind Market known as Resham Gali, which is on the busiest markets in Lasbela’s industrial zone, Hub. Praksah was alleged to have committed blasphemy after he shared the blasphemous content in a Whatsapp group consisting of 58 members reported BBC Urdu.

In response to Prakash’s blasphemous act, all traders of the market closed their shops in protest to get Prakash punished. They took out a rally on Thursday morning which included traders and civilians. However, the protest took a dramatic shift when the crowd encircled the city police station and demanded that the alleged blasphemer should be handed over to them, which police refused to do because, according police, no one was allowed to take law in his/her hands.

However, police and Frontier Corp (FC) officials tried to disrupt the crowd ensuring them to handle the case as per the law of the land. Before the crowed was disrupted, they pelted the police station with stones which left one police official injured. Resultantly, police resorted to aerial firing and fired tear gases in order to disrupt the crowd. Later on, three casualties were reportedly brought to Jam Ghulam Qadir Hospital.  Casualties included two injured persons and a body identified as Qudrat Ullah aged 13 who had succumbed to a built injury. Police alleged that some of the enraged violators from the crowd had weapons that also fired which caused one death, BBC reported.

After the police disrupted the crowd, police were still seemed patrolling in the city in order to prevent any untoward incident. Police and FC contingents were deployed in the areas inhibited by Hindus.

The issue of blasphemy in Pakistan has become very sensitive as this case makes it the third case of blasphemy during two months.  Since 1990 overall 65 cases related to blasphemy have been reported in Pakistan.