MANSEHRA: On Monday in the upper Kohistan district, a Chinese national who is employed in Pakistan was detained on suspicion of making blasphemous remarks.
The foreign national was detained on suspicion of blasphemy and airlifted from the northern region to appear before an anti-terrorism court, according to District Police Officer (DPO) Mohammad Khalid.
Late Sunday night, after some Kohistani labourers working at a big energy project showed up among them and accused the Chinese national of uttering sacrilegious remarks, charged crowds from villages and towns started swarming towards Kamila Bazaar and blocked the Karakoram Highway to traffic.
Under sections 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code and 6/7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, a first information report (FIR) regarding the event was filed with Kamila Police Station.
The suspect needed to be airlifted to Islamabad and then taken to the ATC, so the district government requested a helicopter from the federal capital.
When called, Anwarul Haq, the general manager of the Dasu Hydropower Project, stated that conditions were normal and under control.
A guy was recently tortured to death in February after being abducted from a police station in Nankana Sahib where he was being held for allegedly committing blasphemy.
Similar events occurred in 2021 when Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan citizen who managed a private factory in Sialkot, was brutally murdered by a crowd after being falsely accused of blasphemy.
In Pakistan, the subject of blasphemy is delicate. The contentious blasphemy laws, which were enacted by the late president General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, have long been the target of reform demands from rights activists.
