Human rights organizations have condemned the killing of a doctor who was accused of heresy by officers in southern Pakistan, which has drawn criticism from them.
According to a local police chief in the Sindh province, Dr. Shahnawaz Kanbhar was killed” only by accident” in a fight with soldiers who did not realize it was him.
After being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad of Islam and posting profane content on social media, Dr. Kanbhar fled into lying on Tuesday.
He is the second heresy think to have been shot dead in Pakistan in a week.
According to a police report, soldiers in the area of Mirpur Khas attempted to research the car of two people riding on motorcycles on Wednesday.
Instead of complying, the report says, one of the people opened fire. A weapon struggle ensued, in which Dr Kanbhar was killed.
According to Khoso, the local police chief, it was only after the battle that soldiers learned that the person they shot was Dr. Kanbhar. The following motorcycle passenger escaped.
Another police standard, Khas Asad Chaudhry, told BBC Urdu that Dr Kanbhar was accidentally shot by his friend on the bike.
But, a relative of Dr Kanbhar has told BBC Urdu that he was killed in a “fake encounter”- everything which regional police deny.
An independent investigation into Dr. Kanbhar’s suicide has been ordered by the Interior Minister of the Sindh state, Zia-ul-Hasan Linjar.
Another think who was being detained on suspicion of sacrilege was fatally wound by an officer who opened fire inside a police station in Quetta a fortnight after Dr. Kanbhar’s death.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan ( HRCP), which expressed its deep concern over the alleged extrajudicial killing of two people accused of blasphemy, has condemned the deaths.
” This style of murder in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are reportedly included, is an unsettling tendency”, it said in a statement issued on Friday.
Dr. Kanbhar was shot after Islamists in local Umerkot staged a protest demanding his imprisonment and burning down his office the following morning.
After being blocked by locals and authorities, his family told BBC Urdu that they had to travel miles to destroy him.
A police officer opened fire on a police station in Quetta, killing another suspect who was being held on suspicion of heresy, a month prior to the incident in Sindh province.
The man was taken into custody last Wednesday after being saved from a irate crowd that claimed he had insulted Muhammad.
However, according to local media reports, the boy’s household and tribe claimed that the officer had insulted Muhammad and that he had loved him.
Although mob murders of blasphemy defendants are popular, police killings are uncommon in Pakistan.
Accusations, or perhaps merely rumours, of blasphemy fire rioting and spree by crowds that can escalate into killings.
People found guilty of insulting Islam or any other Muslim religious figure can be executed in Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, but officials have not yet issued a death sentence for it.
In recent years, Pakistan has seen a rise in assaults on sacrilege offenders.
In June, a crowd broke into a police station in the north-western city of Madyan, snatched a defendant who was a visitor, and then killed him over claims that he had desecrated Islam’s holy text.