ISLAMABAD: Police in Pakistan’s eastern city of Sargodha said on Monday that they had registered criminal cases against over 100 people for their involvement in last week’s mob attack against a Christian man and his family over allegations he had desecrated the Qur’an.
A frenzied mob went on a rampage on Saturday in Sargodha after locals said they saw burnt pages of the Qur’an outside the house of a Christian man. Angry protesters set his house on fire and his shoemaking factory, beating up his son as well.
Police said they rescued the Christian father and men after successfully dispersing the crowd following violent clashes. Sargodha Police District Police Officer Assad Malhi said several police officers were injured in the clashes. He said Sargodha Police’s prompt and effective actions “saved the city from a potential disaster, maintaining peace and harmony in the region.”
“Later during the day, criminal cases have been registered against the culprits and police has arrested more than 100 accused charging them with anti-terrorist and attempt to murder sections of law,” Malhi said.
Police said they were also probing the incident and focusing on determining the extent of the damage done as well as identifying those responsible.
“Sargodha police are working tirelessly to ensure that all aspects of the case are thoroughly examined and that justice is served,” Malhi said.
He said police were engaging with the local community to address the root cause of the issue. 
“The police are working closely with local community leaders and religious scholars to promote interfaith harmony and understanding,” Malhi said. 
In a separate post on social media platform X, police said on Monday morning that security had been beefed outside all important churches in Sargodha district following the incident. 
“Sargodha police have completed arrangements for the hyper security of churches across the district,” Sargodha Police wrote on social media platform X. It added that over 1,000 police officers and youths were performing duties at important churches in the district. 
Blasphemy accusations are common in Pakistan and under the country’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death. While no one has been executed on such charges, often just an accusation can cause riots and incite mobs to violence, lynching and killings.
The latest violence, however, brought back memories of one of the worst attacks on Christians in Pakistan in August 2023, when thousands of people set churches and homes of Christians on fire in Jaranwala, a district in Punjab province, also on allegations of desecration of the Qur’an.

PATUAKHALI: Residents of low-lying areas of Bangladesh and India surveyed the damage Monday as a cyclone that lashed the coast weakened into a heavy storm after killing at least 10 people and destroying thousands of homes.

Fierce gales and crashing waves battered the coast as Cyclone Remal made landfall on Sunday night.

By Monday afternoon it had eased, but winds and rain still hammered residents as they picked through the wreckage of their houses.

Villages had been swamped by storm surges, tin roofs had been ripped off, trees uprooted and powerlines cut, an AFP reporter in the affected area said.

“Heavy rains unleashed by the cyclone are going on, and the wind speed is also high,” said Showkat Ali, government administrator of Barisal district, where seven people died.

“They mostly died after they were crushed under fallen houses or collapsed walls,” he told AFP.

Three others died in neighboring districts, including by drowning.

Cyclones have killed hundreds of thousands of people in Bangladesh in recent decades, but the number of superstorms hitting its densely populated coast has increased sharply, from one a year to as many as three, due to the impact of climate change.

In Khulan district, two people died, government administrator Helal Mahmud told AFP.

“The cyclone has damaged more than 123,000 homes in the division, and among them some 31,000 homes were completely damaged,” he said.

At its peak, Remal’s wind speeds hit 111 kilometers (69 miles) per hour, said Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik, senior weather forecaster at the state-run Bangladesh Meteorological Department.

While scientists say climate change is fueling more storms, better forecasting and more effective evacuation planning have dramatically reduced the death toll.

Around a million people in Bangladesh and neighboring India took shelter, fleeing inland for concrete storm shelters away from the dangerous waves.

Most of Bangladesh’s coastal areas are just a meter or two (three to six feet) above sea level, making them vulnerable to high storm surges.

Sumita Mondal, 36, who hunkered down overnight away from India’s coast, said she had fled with only what she could carry.

“My three-year-old son is crying for food,” she told AFP by telephone.

Kamrul Hasan, secretary of Bangladesh’s disaster management ministry, said “embankments in several places have been breached or submerged, inundating some coastal areas.”

In India’s West Bengal, the “cyclone has blown off the roofs of hundreds of houses” and “uprooted thousands of mangrove trees and electricity poles,” senior state government minister Bankim Chandra Hazra told AFP.

“Storm surges and rising sea levels have breached a number of embankments,” Hazra added. “Some island villages are flooded.”

At least 800,000 Bangladeshis fled and more than 150,000 people in India moved inland from the vast Sundarbans mangrove forest, where the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers meet the sea.

Mallik, the Bangladeshi weather expert, said the expansive mangrove forests helped dissipate the worst of the storm.

“Like in the past, the Sundarbans acted as a natural shield to the cyclone,” he said.

But Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, Bangladesh’s senior forest official for the Sundarbans, said the storm surge had swamped crucial freshwater areas with salt water.

“We are worried,” said Hossain. “These ponds were the source of fresh water for the entire wildlife in the mangroves — including the endangered Bengal tigers.”