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Christians accused of ‘blasphemy’ in Sahiwal

* Police, MNA say incident could have been a conspiracy against the accused Christians

By Rana Tanveer

LAHORE: Several Christian families in a village of Sahiwal are on the run and being given life threats by other Christians and Muslims – who are alleging that the families have committed ‘blasphemy’ by throwing ink on the Holy Quran, Daily Times has learnt.

Some neutral locals of the area – Muslims and Christians – said on Friday that 12 Christian families had left their houses in Chak 190/9-AL – a village of Christians with at least 6,500 voters – and taken shelter at an unidentified place over the last seven days, in a bid to save their lives.

A week ago, unidentified people broke into Harrappa Government Community Model Girls Primary School in the village. In the morning, students found on the ground a page of the Holy Quran smeared with black ink and gum. The blackboard had the following words written on it: “I am don”. Locals of the area, Pakistan People’s Party MNA Zahid Iqbal and police told Daily Times that the words on the blackboard led to the assumption that a Christian named Shani was responsible for what had happened, as he was also called ‘don’. “It could have been a conspiracy against Shani,” they said.

Sources told Daily Times that following the incident, a group of Christian families already opposed to Shani started accusing him of committing blasphemy and instigated Muslims and other Christians of the area against him. As a result, mosques in the area made announcements saying “it is matter of respect of Islam and all of them should rise and crush the vice”, said the sources. They said that on Thursday, a large number of Christians and Muslims protested at the arrival of Shahbaz Sharif in Sahiwal, demanding the arrest of Shani. Later the charged mob started shouting slogans against Shani and tried to torch his house and those of his friends and relatives who had already fled the area. However, police intervened and stopped the mob.

On Friday, a mob from a neighbouring village tried to burn the houses of the accused, but some influential people of the area stopped them. On the same day, a meeting was also held to resolve the matter. MNA Zahid, two DSPs, an SHO and others resolved that nobody would be allowed to create unrest in the area. They also decided that police would book those responsible for the crime after a thorough investigation.

Harrapa SHO Allah Ditta told Daily Times that with help from influential people of the area, he had convinced people that it was not a case of blasphemy. He said he had told them that if somebody had dropped some pages of the holy Quran during a robbery in the dark, it did not imply that blasphemy had been committed. He said that above all, it was not clear who had broken into the school. He said that a case had not been registered yet. The sources said that Ashfaq Gill, Nasir, Imran Qasai and Raju – all friends and relatives of Shani – are in police custody, but police denied that.

Sources in the area told Daily Times that Shani was a supporter of PPP MNA Zahid Iqbal while notable Christian families of the village supported Rai Azizullah. They said Zaki Minhas and Sardar Nambardar, both Christians and representatives of their community in the local bodies elections, were against Shani because of his good terms with the MNA. They said he was also a social worker. They said Minhas and Nambardar had “tried to implicate him in fake case”.

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