Police in southern Pakistan shot a blasphemy suspect during an alleged shootout with armed men, officials said Thursday — the second such apparent extra-judicial killing in a week, drawing condemnation from human rights groups.
Police identified the slain man as Shah Nawaz, a doctor in the Umerkot district in the Sindh province, who had gone into hiding two days before after being accused of insulting Islam’s prophet Muhammad and sharing blasphemous content on social media.
Local police chief Niaz Khoso said Nawaz was “killed just by chance” on Wednesday night when officers signaled two men riding on a motorcycle to stop in Mirpur Khas, a city in the southern Sindh province.
He said instead of stopping, the men opened fire and tried to flee, prompting police to return fire. One of the suspects fled on the motorcycle, while the other was killed, he said.
Khoso claimed that it was only after the shootout that officers learned that the slain man was the doctor being sought by them for the alleged blasphemy.
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Videos circulating on social media showed local clerics throwing rose petals at police and praising officers for killing the blasphemy suspect. There was no immediate clarification from the Sindh government about the circumstances in which the suspect was killed.
The killing of Nawaz drew strong condemnation from the country’s independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, which said it was “gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy.”
“This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend,” it said in a statement. HRCP also asked the government to conduct an independent inquiry to ascertain who was responsible for Nawaz’s death and ensure those responsible for it were punished.
The killing of Nawaz in Mirpur Khas came a day after Islamists in a nearby city, Umerkot, staged a protest demanding his arrest. The mob also burned Nawaz’s clinic on Wednesday, officials said.
The latest killing comes a week after an officer opened fire inside a police station in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, fatally wounding Syed Khan, another suspect held on accusations of blasphemy. Khan was arrested on Wednesday after officers rescued him from an enraged mob that claimed he had insulted Islam’s prophet.
But he was killed by a police officer, Mohammad Khurram, who was quickly arrested.
Though killings of blasphemy suspects by mobs are common, the extra-judicial killings by police are rare in Pakistan.
Under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in attacks on blasphemy suspects in recent years.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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