ISLAMABAD: Police have arrested over 40 suspects involved in last week’s lynching death of a man outside a police station in eastern Pakistan, a police spokesperson said on Monday.
A mob stormed a police station in the city of Nankana Sahib on Saturday and took Muhammad Waris, a man in his early 20s arrested for allegedly desecrating the Qur’an, out of the premises, beat him to death and attempted to set his body on fire.
The country has seen many cases of vigilante justice by mobs against people accused of blasphemy, including the 2021 lynching of a Sri Lankan garment factory manager.
“We have arrested more than 40 people involved in the incident so far after identification from the video footage and action against the remaining continued,” Waqas Khalid, a public relations officer for Nankana Sahib police, told Arab News over the phone.
He said no evidence had surfaced so far of the involvement of any religious group or party in the murder.
“Six police teams are conducting raids to arrest the suspects under the supervision of District Police Officer (DPO) Nankana Sahib,” Khalid said, adding that the chief of Punjab police had also constituted a joint investigation team to probe the case.
Two first information, or police, reports (FIR) had been lodged by the local police, he said, one against hundreds of unknown suspects who attacked the police station and committed the murder and the other against the case of the desecrating the Holy Qur’an.
“The investigation teams have taken hundreds of video clips from different available sources to gather evidence and identified more persons involved in the incident,” Khalid said.
Forensic analysis of video footage was also done to verify it, he said.
“Police are trying to identify and arrest persons who are involved in lynching and attacking the police station,” Khalid said. “We have taken video footage from all across the city from wherever we could and our teams are identifying and arresting the persons.”
“Burial of the deceased person has been done and his mother is in police protection,” the police spokesperson added.
He said the victim, Ali, was previously arrested in a blasphemy case in 2019 but was found innocent by a court and released from jail in 2022.
Sheikhupura Regional Police Officer (RPO) Babar Sarfraz Alpa told media around 50 policemen tried to save Ali from the mob but were outnumbered, and reinforcement officers who were called in arrived after the man was already dead.
A video of the incident, shared on social media and confirmed as authentic by the police, showed a man being dragged through the streets by his legs, stripped of his clothes and being pummelled by sticks and metal rods.
International rights groups have long criticized Pakistani authorities for not doing enough to stem lynchings over accusations of blasphemy, which have been frequent in the Muslim-majority country. Blasphemy is also a crime under Pakistani law, which can carry the death sentence.
Six men were sentenced to death for lynching the Sri Lankan garment factory manager in a mass trial that involved some 89 suspects after the matter sparked national and global outrage. Other cases rarely see similar action.
