Second Lahore lynching victim identified as garment worker

Published March 17, 2015
DawnNews screengrab shows Babar Noman, a hosiery worker, who had come from Sargodha in search of employment at a factory.
DawnNews screengrab shows Babar Noman, a hosiery worker, who had come from Sargodha in search of employment at a factory.

LAHORE: The second victim of Lahore lynching incident has been identified as Babar Noman, a garment worker who had come from Sargodha in search of employment at a factory, DawnNews reported on Tuesday.

The family members of Noman have come forward to claim the dead body of the deceased. However, police officials are persistent that the identity of the deceased can only be confirmed after the reports of DNA tests.

Meanwhile, police buried the dead body of the victim on Tuesday evening which will now be exhumed on court’s order following the application from victim’s family.

The first victim was identified when Muhammad Saleem filed an application at Lahore's Nishtar Colony police station on Monday, saying that one of the two men lynched by an angry mob following the twin church blasts on Sunday was his brother Naeem.

Muhammad Saleem said his brother worked as a glass cutter and had nothing to do with church bombings in Lahore.

“He is the glass cutter and not the terrorist, spare him,” shouted one of the protesters who had got hold of Naeem while he was locking his motorcycle soon after the twin blasts at Youhanabad churches on Sunday.

Also read: Mob lynching is ‘worst kind of terrorism’, says Nisar

However, the charged mob paid no heed to the voice of the acquaintance of Naeem and continued beating him to his last breath, Saleem, the elder sibling of Naeem told Dawn.com while quoting some protesters involved in the gruesome act.

Following Sunday’s attacks on two churches in Lahore’s Christian locality, Youhanabad, scores of protesters had taken away two suspects held by the police and lynched them.

Punjab Police IG Mushtaq Sukhera had said after the lynching: “The policemen did attempt to resist but the mob was highly charged. It was not impossible to use force at that time because it could turn the situation ugly and perhaps out of control.”

Commenting on the killing, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said “Killing someone on the basis of suspicion is inhumane. No one has the right to take the law into their own hands.”

He said an order to arrest those involved in the lynching had been issued.

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