A Muslim mob torched a police station and 4 police posts in a single day in northwest Pakistan after authorities refused at hand over a mentally unstable man accused of insulting Islam’s holy ebook, the Quran, officers stated on Monday. .
Local official Asif Khan stated no officers had been injured within the assaults, forcing the police to name in troops to revive order within the Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
In a video posted on social media, the police station is seen burning.
Khan stated the officers foiled an try by the mob to thrash the detainee and the police took him to a different district. He didn’t reveal the identify of the person, including that authorities had been nonetheless investigating and the suspect was arrested a day earlier.
Cars set ablaze by an offended mob are seen in entrance of a broken police station, in Mandani, an space in Charsadda district (AP).
Khan stated the officers initially resisted however fled after 1000’s of protesters attacked police buildings. He stated the police shunned utilizing power to forestall casualties among the many protesters. He stated the state of affairs in Charsadda was regular on Monday and that legislation enforcement was looking for to arrest these linked to the assaults.
Blasphemy is punishable by demise in Pakistan, the place the fees of the crime are sometimes sufficient to incite mob violence. International and home rights teams say accusations of blasphemy are sometimes used to intimidate non secular minorities and set private scores.
In 2017, a bunch of scholars at Abdul Wali Khan University within the northwestern metropolis of Mardan attacked and killed one other scholar, Mohammed Mashal, after accusing him of sharing blasphemous materials on Facebook.
A Punjab governor in Islamabad was additionally shot useless by his personal guard in 2011 after he defended a Christian lady, Asiya Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy. She was acquitted after spending eight years on the demise row and after receiving threats, she moved to Canada to hitch her household.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
