LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday acquitted two accused but upheld the death penalty of three others in the 2014 case of lynching and burning alive of a Christian couple for alleged blasphemy near Kot Radha Kishan, a tehsil of Kasur district.

Shahzad Masih and his wife Shama, who was then pregnant with her fourth child, were bonded labourers at a brick kiln of Yousaf Gujjar.

A mob of over 700 people allegedly led by the kiln owner brutally killed the couple on the charge of blasphemy. The prosecution said a prayer leader had provoked the villagers against the couple. The mob burnt the couple alive in the kiln.

Following investigation soon after the incident in November 2014, police registered a case against 660 villagers. In 2015, an anti-terrorism court indicted 106 suspects and then in 2016 the ATC awarded death penalty on four counts to five men — Hafiz Ishtiaq, the prayer leader; Mehdi Khan, Riaz Kamboh, Muhammad Hanif and Irfan Shakoor.

The court had also awarded two-year imprisonment each to eight other suspects including Muhammad Hussain, Muham­mad Arsalan, Muhammad Haris, Noorul Hassan, Muhammad Munir, Muhammad Ramzan and Hafiz Shahid.

However, the court acquitted 93 suspects including kiln owner Yousaf Gujjar as charges were not established against them.

The five convicts filed appeals in the high court challenging their death penalties.

A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Muhammad Qasim Khan, however, allowed appeals of two — Hafiz Ishtiaq and Muhammad Hanif — but rejected the appeals of three others, upholding their death penalty. A detailed judgement in the fresh case is awaited.

Lynching case

Quoting witnesses, police said announcements were made from mosques on Nov 4, 2014, asking villagers to gather at the Yousaf brick kiln where 25-year-old Shama and her husband Shahzad Masih had allegedly desecrated some pages of the holy Quran.

Over 700 charged people from three villages took out the couple from a room, where they had taken shelter, after tearing apart its roof and tortured them before throwing them into the kiln’s furnace. The mob held five policemen hostage who tried to rescue the couple and the villagers also manhandled media personnel trying to cover the incident and snatched their cameras.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2019