Rimsha Masih: Prayer leader released on bail in blasphemy case

Hafiz Mohammad Khalid Chishti was released on bail after submitting a surety and a bond of Rs200,000.


Afp October 12, 2012

ISLAMABAD: The cleric who accused Rimsha Masih of committing blasphemy and was arrested for allegedly framing evidence, was released on Friday, a day after he was granted bail by a court, his lawyer said.

Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, the imam of the mosque in Rimsha's area, who first provided police the burned papers as evidence against her, was detained on September 1 for desecrating the Quran himself and tampering with evidence.

"My client has been released and he came out of Adiyala jail today," his lawyer Wajid Ali Gilani told AFP.

Chishti was granted bail on Thursday October 11, 2012, after a surety and a bond of Rs200,000 was submitted at the court in Islamabad, he said.

The cleric was arrested after his deputy Maulvi Zubair and two others told a magistrate Chishti added pages from the Quran to the burnt pages brought to him by a witness, investigators have said.

Zubair and the two others, Mohammad Shahzad and Awais Ahmed, said they had urged Chishti not to interfere with the papers but he told them it was the only way to expel the Christians from the area.

On August 24 Chishti told AFP he thought Rimsha burned the pages deliberately as part of a Christian "conspiracy" to insult Muslims, and said action should have been taken sooner to stop what he called their "anti-Islam activities" in impoverished Mehrabad neighbourhood of Islamabad.

Rimsha had spent as many as three weeks in an adult jail after she was arrested on August 16 for allegedly burning pages from the Quran

She and her family remain in hiding for safety after Rimsha was released on bail last month. Her case was only sent to a juvenile court when a medical report confirmed she was only 14 years of age.

COMMENTS (20)

jacobin777 | 11 years ago | Reply

This man is a pathetic excuse for a Muslim.

Jibran | 11 years ago | Reply

Why are Muslims not making any noise about this guy is proven that this guy tore pages of Quran is that not blasphemy??? why so much silence??

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