A mob lynched a Sri Lankan national on Friday before burning his body for alleged blasphemy in Pakistan’s Sialkot city. Priyantha Kumara had been working as operational manager at a private factory for the past seven years.

According to police, violence broke out after factory workers claimed that Kumara was seen tearing a poster bearing the name of Prophet Muhammad and throwing it into a dustbin. “The victim was accused of desecrating Islamic stickers,” said Anwar Ghumman, a senior police officer. He said Kumara was lynched inside the factory.

PM Imran Khan tweeted that the “horrific vigilante attack… is a day of shame for Pakistan”. He promised a thorough investigation and said those responsible will be severely punished.

Blasphemy charges often cause mass violence in Pak

Kumara allegedly tore a poster of the hardline Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) in which Quranic verses were inscribed and threw it in the dustbin. The poster of the Islamist party was pasted on the wall adjoining the office of Kumara.

A couple of factory workers saw him removing the poster and spread the word in the factory,” PTI quoted a Pakistan Punjab police official as saying. Locals said as rumours that Kumara had committed blasphemy started spreading across the locality, a mob started gathering in the morning vowing to lynch the foreign national.

Ishtiaq Hussain, a local resident, said that people from adjoining areas also joined the mob in the lynching. When police arrived at the scene, Hussain said, the victim had already been “tortured to death” and his body was being set on fire.

Videos shared on social media showed hundreds of men and young boys gathered at the site, with groups of them chanting Islamic slogans. Most of the people surrounding the burning corpse were seen recording it.

Police said that video footage from inside the factory where the torture took place has been seized to identify the suspects and added that efforts to make arrests were under way. “Some people have already been arrested,” Ghumman said.

Blasphemy charges are often enough to prompt mass violence in Pakistan. Observers claim such accusations are often aimed at settling personal scores in the conservative Muslim nation, especially against minorities.

The latest horrific incident comes days after an angry mob in the northwestern district of Charsadda, near Peshawar, set fire to a police station, police checkpoints and parked cars, demanding that police hand over a man to them suspected of burning a copy of the Quran.

by Omer Farooq Khan in Times of India, Dec 4, 2021 https://epaper.timesgroup.com/olive/odn/timesofindia/printarticle.aspx?doc=TOIDEL%2F2021%2F12%2F04&entity=ar02914&ts=20211204015204&uq=20211112072952&mode=text