A teenager walked into a police station on Friday and shot dead a 65-year-old man from a minority community accused of blasphemy in a Punjab village, their spokesman said, the second murder involving Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws in as many weeks.
Rights activists said the attack, and a spike in the number of blasphemy cases, was evidence of rising intolerance in the country.
According to the Ahmadi community version of the case, Murder victim Khalil Ahmad and three other Ahmadis had asked a shopkeeper in their village Sharaqpur – about 55 km (33 miles) northwest of the Punjab capital, Lahore – earlier this week to remove inflammatory stickers denouncing their community
In retaliation, the shopkeeper filed blasphemy charges against the four men on May 12. Ahmad, a father of four, was in police custody when the teenage boy walked in, asked to see him, and shot him dead.
Meanwhile police are investigating the case from all angels.
