Pakistani mob kills man 'for burning Koran': police
MULTAN, Pakistan — A 2,000-strong Pakistani mob snatched a mentally
unstable man from a police station, beat him to death and torched his
body after he allegedly burned pages from a Koran, police said Thursday.
The
mob ransacked the police station in a village on the outskirts of
central Pakistan's Bahawalpur city, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south
of Multan, on Tuesday after officers refused to hand him over.
Local
police station chief Ghulam Mohiuddin said Ghulam Abbas, in his early
40s, was taken into custody after people said they caught him burning
pages of the Muslim holy book.
"After some time, more than 2,000
people surrounded the police station and asked the police to hand over
the man to them, and upon refusal they ransacked the police station and
took the accused with them," Mohiuddin told AFP.
"The protesters
also set fire to several motorcycles and vehicles parked in the police
station and damaged the quarters of police officials.
"Later they took away Ghulam Abbas to a main crossing, beat him to death and set his body on fire."
He said the man was mentally unstable and "was not aware of even the location of his residence".
District
police chief Ahmed Ishaq Jahangir told AFP the mob was too much for the
police to handle after some in the group incited others to take action.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) demanded an inquiry into the killing.
"HRCP...
strongly condemns not only the burning to death of a man in Bahawalpur,
who had been accused of desecrating pages of the Koran, but also the
authorities' failure to prevent a horrendous crime that was not at all
unexpected," the group said.
Pakistan is majority Muslim and its
anti-blasphemy laws make defaming Islam or the Prophet Mohammed, or
desecrating the Koran, punishable by death.
Former Punjab governor
Salman Taseer was shot dead in January last year by one of his police
bodyguards for opposing the tough laws.
In June another mob
attacked a police station north of Quetta demanding a man detained for
allegedly burning a Koran, with the incident leaving one protester dead
and 19 wounded.
In February, reports that Americans set fire to
Korans on an American base in neighbouring Afghanistan sparked riots
that killed at least 40 people.
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