Crowds set up police station on fire because of Quran devastation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan

About 2,000 people remained outside the police station burning the officers’ uniforms.

Peshawar:

Thousands of people raided a Pakistani police station, setting it on fire and nearby checkpoints, police said on Monday, after demanding officers hand over a man accused of burning a Quran. ‘an.

Crowds of up to 5,000 people surrounded the police station in the town of Charsadda in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday night, also setting fire to more than 30 cars.

On Monday morning, about 2,000 people remained outside the police station burning the officers’ uniforms.

“The crowd stormed into the police station demanding that the man be handed over to them so they could burn him alive like the Quran,” district police chief Asif Bahadur told AFP.

The identity and religion of the accused have not yet been revealed by police, Bahadur said.

“The motive behind the burning of the copy of the Holy Quran is still unknown but we are investigating.”

Blasphemy is an extremely sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unproven accusations can stir up mobs and violence.

Human rights groups say the law is often violated for private organizations, many of which are targeted by minorities.

A Christian couple was burned then burned in a kiln in Punjab in 2014 after being accused of forging the Quran.

A former Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, was shot dead by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri in Islamabad in 2011 for calling for reform of blasphemy laws.

The brazen murder made Qadri revered as a hero by Muslims.

Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman and laborer from the central province of Punjab, was found guilty of blasphemy in 2010 and executed until she was acquitted in 2018. This prompted days of violent Muslim protests.

She and her family later fled the country to Canada.

The country has frequently been crippled in recent years by anti-blasphemy protests organized by the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party, which often involves the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed on a television station. French satirical magazine.

(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)