Karachi – Sentenced to death by his Muslim co-workers, 22-year-old Jagdeesh Kumar was beaten for almost half an hour and left to die in the leather factory where he worked. Charging him with blasphemy the workers arbitrarily enforced the country’s infamous law which imposes the death penalty for anyone guilty of defiling or blaspheming against Islam and the prophet Muhammad.
Mgr John Saldanha, archbishop of Lahore and chairman of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan and of its National Commission for Justice and Peace, harshly slammed the killing.
“Changes to the blasphemy law to prevent abuses have not improved ordinary people’s lives; they are still victims of people led by emotions and instincts who take the law into their own hands,” he said. “The government should heed demands from the population for the law to be scrapped.”
The archbishop said that killing someone without solid evidence and without a trial is clearly an irresponsible act. He urges the authorities to investigate this case.
“Incidents such as this in which people take the law into their own hands, meting out justice to alleged offenders, are shocking and upsetting,” Monsignor Saldanha said.
This case must become a test for the new government to show that “laws are applied and that all citizens are considered equal before the law.”
Police arrived on the scene after the incident and confirmed that Jagdeesh’s alleged blasphemous statements provoked his co-workers into beating him to death.
But the blasphemy accusations have not convinced the family who believe that religion had nothing to do with it. For them it is just a personal vendetta.
Jagdeesh’s brother-in-law Raju said that “he was a simple young man and knew little about religion. We came to Karachi to earn a living, not to take part in religious disputes. It is very easy to kill a member of a minority and then accuse him of blasphemy. This is why we want the inquiry to go ahead.”
In Pakistan blasphemy is punishable by the death, but no one has officially been sentenced. However, some 30 people have been the victims of illegal summary justice, even in police custody.
The places of worship of religious minorities and the homes of their members have often come under attack.
In Pakistan Hindus are minority representing 1.6 per cent of the population of this Muslim nation of about 160 million people.