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A killing that has sparked debate on blasphemy laws in Pakistan

Blasphemy is an offence punishable by death in Pakistan, but Jagdeesh Kumar’s co-workers did not allow him the luxury of a court hearing even under this infamous law. Instead, the 20-year-old Hindu youth was simply lynched by his co-workers in the factory where he was employed for allegedly making blasphemous remarks against Prophet Muhammad.

The April 8 incident has once again spurred debate in Pakistan on the levels of religious intolerance in the country and on sections 295-B and 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code, together known as the blasphemy laws.

A Human Rights Commission of Pakistan fact-finding team that visited the leather factory in Karachi’s Korangi Industrial Area the day after the macabre incident has recorded that Jagdeesh was lynched in the presence of several policemen who did nothing to prevent the incident.

According to Abdul Hai of the Sindh chapter of the HRCP who was in the fact-finding team, the altercation between Jagdish Kumar and his co-workers began at 10 a.m. , and was first settled by a factory supervisor within a few minutes. The HRCP says a personal dispute was the reason for the fight.

An hour or so later, the workers attacked him again, alleging that he had made blasphemous comments. At this point, the factory’s security guards rescued Jagdeesh, taking him to the guard room, where he remained under their protection. Meanwhile, the factory called the police. But despite the presence of a number of policemen in the premises, and outside, a massive mob of workers collected at the guardroom, and eventually broke down its doors and lynched Jagdeesh Kumar.

“My boy went to Karachi so he could bring in some rupees to feed the family,” said his father Prabhu Lal, a 65-year-old former beedi roller in Mirpur Khas, a district in the Thar desert with a sizeable Hindu population near Pakistan’s border with Rajasthan. “But we got his body instead. This is the biggest injustice that could have been done to my son and to me and my family.”

The Karachi police have since arrested three workers from the factory where Jagdish was done to death. But the victim’s family believes that in order to be let off or treated with lenience, the killers are using the blasphemy accusation to justify a murder committed for other reasons.

“We don’t know enough about our own religion to talk about, how can we dare to talk about another religion? It is impossible that Jagdeesh would have said anything against Islam,” said Ashok Kumar, a neighbour of the family.

The family fear that unless the police expose the “real” motive behind his killing, the blasphemy charge against Jagdish could “stain” and endanger the lives of the entire family.

Some see a direct link between Jagdeesh’s killing and Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that were added on to the Pakistan Penal Code section relating to “offences against religion” between 1982 and 1986. Sub section 295-B of 1982 prescribes life imprisonment for defiling or desecrating the Koran. Sub section 295-C of 1986 lays down that “whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life, and shall also be liable to fine”.

According to one analyst writing in Dawn, “the explanation for [Jagdeesh’s] co-workers’ criminal conduct is to be found in the vague complexity of the law which leaves every individual free to view the ‘imputation, innuendo or insinuation, directly or indirectly’ in the light of his own conviction or as indoctrinated by the mullah.”

More than 4,000 blasphemy cases have been registered since the law came into existence. Convictions are rare, and no one has yet been hanged for it, but in dozens of instances, the accused have been killed by mobs.

In 2005, a mob in the town of Spin Kakh gave chase to Ashiq Nabi for alleged blasphemy and shot him dead as he tried to escape by climbing up a tree. His wife had reportedly held up a Koran for protection during a fight with Nabi, and when he pushed her, the book fell on the floor. A local maulvi filed charges of blasphemy against Nabi, but instead of waiting for the police to arrest him, incited townspeople over the loudspeaker of the local mosque to go after him.

Very often, the law is used to target members of the minority community, and several time, has also been used by Muslims against each other to settle personal scores. The 2008 annual report of the non-government Human Rights Commission of Pakistan details several cases in which people have been charged with the offence on the basis of flimsy evidence.

In most cases, the accused languish in prison until their cases are decided, but even behind bars, they live in fear of violence against them by other inmates. The fears of being set upon only increase after acquittal and release. The Dawn article cited an instance in which four brothers were found by a court to have been falsely accused of blasphemy by a village rival. By the time the case was decided, they had spent six years in jail. Fearing retaliation after their release, the four soon fled Pakistan.

In its 2008 annual report, the HRCP comments that a growing number of Muslims in Pakistan had begun to feel that the only true version of Islam is the one they practise, and as the State had failed in its duty to protect the interests of the religion “that it is their religious duty to enforce it on all and sundry by deploying all possible means, including the use of force against those who do not fall in line”.

The report said this was also one reason for the unchecked growth of extremism and militancy in Pakistan.

Human rights activists believe that the failure of the government to take exemplary action against vigilantism in the name of religion encourages people to take the law into their hands, or misuse it with impunity.

“The kind of extremism that has been displayed in [the Jagdeesh Kumar] case, there are likely to be many more such sad incidents because governments are unable to counter it firmly,” said HRCP director I.A. Rehman.

Mr. Rehman said it would take Pakistan “a long time” to rectify the situation because no government was prepared to antagonise conservative elements in the country.

In 2000, President Pervez Musharraf tried to make changes to the implementation of the blasphemy law so that the complaint could be made only to a senior police officer, but he had to back down in the face of opposition from religious hardliners.

Mr. Rehman said the HRCP did not include the repeal of the blasphemy laws in the 16-point programme that it forwarded to the new government as “Pakistan is not yet ready for this”. But the rights group has demanded the abolition of the death penalty, which will indirectly bring changes to the blasphemy law.

Moderate and progressive voices in the electronic and print media are urging Pakistan’s new government to come down heavily on those who were responsible for Jagdeesh’s killing in order to send out an unequivocal message that religious vigilantism will not be tolerated.

A few days after Jagdeesh’s killing, the Sindh chief minister sent a Hindu member of the Provincial Assembly to Mirpur Khas to meet the family and assure them that justice would be done. But the family is too scared to follow up on that assurance and ensure that Jagdeesh’s killers were brought to book.

“Some people have been saying to me that I should go to Karachi and demand justice. But I’m frightened of the consequences,” Prabhu Lal said. The only course of action open to him, the bereaved father said, was to keep his head down and hope for the best.

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