Rimsha case: Witnesses who testified against Khalid Jadoon backtrack

Witnesses say that police 'tortured' them and 'forced' them to give statements against prayer leader Jadoon.

ISLAMABAD: Three witnesses who had testified against prayer leader Khalid Jadoon for leveling blasphemy allegations against Christian girl Rimsha Masih backtracked from their statements, saying that the police “forced” them to do it, Express News reported Monday.

The witnesses, including the mosque’s muezzin Hafiz Zubair and Hafiz Awais and Khurram Shahzad, who endorsed Zubair’s statement, submitted a sworn statement before a District and Sessions court in Islamabad.

In the statement, the witnesses maintained that the police had tortured them and made them give statement against Jadoon.

Police officials investigating the blasphemy case against Rimsha had earlier submitted an interim charge-sheet declaring cleric Khalid Jadoon Chishti guilty before the trial court.

The cleric was accused of adding pages from the Quran to ashes seized from 14-year-old Rimsha to implicate her and was sent to jail on a 14-day judicial remand by the judicial magistrate hearing the case on September 2, 2012.