Five men handed death sentence for burning Christian couple in 2014

An Anti-Terrorism Court on Wednesday gave out the death sentence to five men who had a hand in the burning alive of a Christian couple in Kot Radha Kishan in 2014. The case had been going on for the past two years and the sentence has finally been given out to people who tried to take the law in their own hands.

The five men have been identified as Mehdi Khan, Riaz Kamby, Irfan Shakoor, Muhammad Hanif, and Hafiz Ishtiaq ? a local prayer leader. In addition to the death sentence, they were also fined Rs. 200,000 for their involvement in the lynching incident which took the lives of the couple.

Eight other men have also been charged with assisting with the lynching and they have been sentenced to two years each in prison. These eight men were identified as Muhammad Hussain, Noorul Hasan, Muhammad Arsalan, Muhammad Haris, Muhammad Muneer, Muhammad Ramazan, Irfan and Hafiz Shahid.

According to a challan submitted in the court by complainants, the five men handed the death penalty to a Christian couple, whom they claimed had desecrated the Holy Quran. Through incendiary speech and by making announcements over a mosque loudspeaker, the suspects gathered a large mob consisting of hundreds of people.

Incited by the hate speech, around 400 men started lynching the couple-Shahzad and Shama-for their alleged role in carrying out the blasphemous act. Both the husband and wife were brick kiln workers from Chak-59 of Kot Radha Kishan, a small town in Kasur district. Due to the lynching, the couple died at the spot. Shama was a mother of three and pregnant at the time she died.

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Posted by fatimaarshad on Nov 23 2016. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.