Videos circulating on social media showed crowds surrounding a body that had been set on fire in the middle of the road, and a large crowd gathered outside a police station.
In a horrific incident in Pakistan’s Swat region, a man was allegedly burnt alive by a mob for allegedly violating the Quran.
Police have detained 27 people, including the two brothers, according to ARY News on Sunday.
The incident occurred on June 20 in Madian, a popular tourist destination in Swat district, 340 km from the country’s capital, Islamabad.
Swat District Police Officer (DPO) Zahidullah Khan said police had transferred the suspect in the blasphemy case to a police station, but a mob stormed the station and took the suspect away.
“People set fire to the police station and a mobile vehicle,” the police chief said, adding that the suspects were “set on fire.”
Videos circulating on social media showed a crowd surrounding a body that had been set on fire in the middle of the road, as well as a large crowd gathering outside a police station. Dawn.com reporters contacted police to verify the footage, Dawn reported.
Prosecutor Khan said a large police force had been deployed in Madyan to try to control the tense situation.
Moreover, police teams are conducting investigations to make more arrests in the Madian case.
Earlier, Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal condemned the lynching incident in Swat and called for an end to this “street justice”.
During the budget debate in Parliament, Ahsan Iqbal termed the incident as horrifying.
Ahsan said Congress needed to pay close attention to “mob justice” which has brought Pakistan to the “brink of catastrophe”.
“We must take note of this case. Religion has been used to justify mob violence and street justice, to the point of flagrant violation of the Constitution, the law and the state,” he lamented.
At least 2,120 people were accused of blasphemy between 1987 and 2022, according to the Dawn newspaper.
Last month, police rescued a Christian man in Sargodha from mobs who were furious at him for desecrating the Quran, but he died of his injuries nine days later.
In 2022, a middle-aged man was stoned to death by a mob in a remote village in Khanewal district on suspicion of blasphemy.
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