PESHAWAR: The number of students arrested in connection with the lynching in Abdul Wali Khan Univ­ersity has risen to 26 since Thursday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police chief Salahuddin Khan Mehsud told a press conference on Monday, adding that those arrested were mainly students, but also included some university clerical workers.

On Thursday, hundreds of student lynched journalism student Mashal Khan over allegations of blasphemy, while two other students identified as Abdullah, a journalism student, and Zubair narrowly survived.

Police have not found concrete evidence supporting the blasphemy charge against Mashal and the two other students, IG Mehsud said, while condemning the university for investigating alleged blasphemy on campus without involving the police.

Abdullah recorded his statement before Judicial Magistrate (JM) Mohibur Rehman in Mardan under Section 164 of the criminal procedure code on Monday, in which he recounted the grisly incident, and insisted that neither he nor the deceased Mashal had uttered any blasphemous words.

He said on the day of the incident, one of the conspirators Muhammad Abbas, also from the journalism department, had asked him to accompany him to the department where they met class representative Mudasir Bashir, the actual perpetrator and another student. They accused him of committing blasphemy, but “I bluntly refused the nefarious allegations and there and then recited kalima in front of them and also translated it into Urdu and Pashto,” he said.

They then tried to pressure him to testify against Mashal which Abdullah said he refused to do.

“Prior to the grievous incident of April 13, the university administration was deadly against the Mashal Khan for his criticism of loopholes in the administration,” Abdullah said.

At the press conference, IG Mehsud said the university had appointed an inquiry committee to in­­vestigate the blasphemy allegati­ons. The committee began its inquiry at the university’s committee room a few hours before Mashal was killed, he said. The varsity’s students knew about it.

He said, however, only Abdullah had appeared before this committee, while Mashal and Zubair had stayed away. Abdullah was presenting his statement before the committee when the situation spiralled out of hand and Abdullah’s explanation was cut short.

In his statement before the judicial magistrate, Abdullah said that three faculty members had managed to hide him in the bathroom. They tried to reason with the mob in the chairman’s office but the mob only swelled.

He said they managed to break into the bathroom where he was hiding and kicked and punched him but the police intervened and some students managed to push the others away.

The KP police inspector general said the Maltoon town DSP heard about the incident at around 12.15pm. When he arrived at the varsity, the mob was trying to get at Abdullah, but he managed to pull them off him.

A short while later, they heard shots fired from the direction of Hostel 1, located about 800 to 900 metres from administration block. Mashal had been killed and the police found his body lying in front of the hostel. He said police had managed to stop the mob from setting the dead body on fire and arrested 59 students and evacuated the university.

Abdullah identified two of his juniors as Izhar and Farhan, who had handed him over to the mob.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2017