Nautan Lal has been sent back to Central Prison in Sukkur. In the past two years, his requests for bail have been rejected twice…reports Asian Lite News
A sessions court in Pakistan’s Ghotki has sentenced a Hindu man to life in prison on charges of blasphemy. Nautan Lal has been fined Rs 50,000 as well, Samaa TV reported.
Additional Sessions Judge Mumtaz Ali Solangi delivered the verdict on Tuesday. It has taken the court two years to pass the final order. Nautan Lal has been in jail since 2019 as an undertrial prisoner.
A case against Nautan Lal was also registered under Section 295-C (use of derogatory remarks).
He has been sent back to Central Prison in Sukkur. In the past two years, his requests for bail have been rejected twice, the report said.
On September 14, 2019, a video was shared on social media in which a teenager, a first-year Intermediate student, claimed that the owner of Ghotki’s Sindh Public Higher Secondary School had blasphemed himself.
According to teachers, however, Nautan Lal was just visiting that day. He does not actually teach at his school. He is a physics teacher at Government Degree College Ghotki, the report said.
Soon after, the head of a madrassa, Mufti Adul Karim Sayeedi of Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, registered a blasphemy case against the school owner.
Violence broke out in the district the night the case was registered. As the news spread, masked men attacked the Sacho Satram Dham Temple in Ghotki. They ransacked the temple, damaged its idols and battered its blue and green walls, Samaa TV reported.
Christians, women top blasphemy targets
Violence against Christians is on the rise in Pakistan, particularly among Christian women, according to a new report by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ).
CSJ reports suggest, roughly 70 per cent of female victims of extrajudicial murders on blasphemy charges come from these minority communities, and the bulk of the victims are Christian women.
“If you’re a Christian woman in Pakistan, you’re probably the most likely to be charged with blasphemy following torture, a lengthy trial, and, most likely, a death sentence are the end results,” reported Times of Israel.
Despite making up just 5 per cent of the population, minority populations are implicated in roughly one-third of all blasphemy cases, suggests the report’s findings.
Blasphemy laws in Pakistan are used to settle personal disputes, reported the Times of Israel.
Over half of the 484 members of minority communities charged with blasphemy were Christians (264), nearly 40 per cent were Ahmadis (188), and the rest were Hindus (21), Pervaizis (7), Ismailis (1), Sikhs (1), and Buddhists (2).
According to a report from the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in Islamabad, of those accused of blasphemy, 89 have been subjected to extrajudicial murder by lynch mobs since the country’s inception in 1947.
Most of the cases, approximately 70 per cent, occurred in Punjab. The remaining instances primarily occurred in Sindh, where 177 accusations were reported during the ten year period, and Islamabad, where 55 cases were reported during the same time.
