A man was killed by a mob over alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in the Madyan area of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Swat district on Thursday night, police said.
Eight people were injured in the unrest, according to Swat District Police Officer (DPO) Dr Zahidullah Khan.
He said the police had moved the suspect of the alleged desecration incident to the police station but a charged mob “attacked the police station and took the suspect away”.
“People set fire to the police station and a mobile vehicle,” the DPO said, adding that the suspect was “torched”. More details are awaited while an investigation is underway.
Videos making the rounds on social media show a mob circling a body on fire in the middle of the road as well as people gathered in huge numbers outside a police station.
Madyan is one of the famous tourist spots of Pakistan’s KPK’s Swat Valley apart from Kalam, Bahrain and other sites. It is around 245 kilometres from the provincial capital of Peshawar.
“And the madness continues … We are hellbent to commit suicide as a society,” rued former information minister Fawad Chaudhry.
Fuelled by an extremist religious worldview, violence against non-Muslims in Pakistan has escalated rapidly ever since Gen Ziaul Haq made blasphemy punishable by death. Between 1927 and 1986, only 14 incidents of blasphemy were reported in what is now Pakistan. But after the changes were made in the law, the number surged quickly.
At least 2,120 persons are reported to have been accused of committing blasphemy between 1987 and 2022.
Last month, police saved a Christian man from enraged people in Sargodha on allegations of desecration of the Holy Quran, who died nine days later from his injuries.
In 2022, a middle-aged man was stoned to death by a mob over alleged desecration in a remote village of Khanewal district.
