School principal: Blasphemy accused to be sent for mental check-up

SP says principal’s pamphlets contain no blasphemous content.

LAHORE:

Police are to send a school principal who allegedly claimed to be a prophet to a psychiatrist for evaluation, The Express Tribune has learnt.

Nishtar Town police registered a case against the principal, Salma, on Monday night on the complaint of a local prayer leader named Qari Iftikhar Qazi, who alleged that she had circulated writings in which she had claimed to be a prophet.

Model Town Investigation SP Saifullah Khattak said that police had been unable to record the woman’s statement yet. “She talks too fast and often starts talking about things other than what is asked of her. The policemen who interrogated her have doubts about her mental stability,” he said



The SP said that she would be sent for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she was fit to stand trial or if she bore responsibility for her alleged actions. The evaluation is to take place once her judicial remand ends on September 17.

Other officials at the SP’s office said that she would be sent to Services Hospital or the Mental Hospital for the evaluation, depending on which hospital police felt was more secure.

SP Khattak said that the woman’s handwritten notes which allegedly contained blasphemous material would be sent for forensic analysis to determine if they matched her handwriting.

Operations SP Tariq Aziz, who is currently on leave, said that he had seen the pamphlets and they contained no direct claim of prophethood on the woman’s behalf.



Qazi, the complainant in the case, accused the police of seeking to given the woman undue protection. “She has claimed to be a prophet and deserves the death penalty under Pakistani law,” he said, adding that he believed she was mentally fit as she taught schoolchildren mathematics.

Qazi said that he had thought about the impact that his allegations would have on the woman’s family, but he had been left with no choice but to report her to the police because of the gravity of the offence.

Policemen who had been involved in the woman’s interrogation said she had claimed to have differences with Qazi over the kind of Islam he preached at the local mosque. She said that they were from different sects. She accused the imam of turning locals, most of them uneducated, against her because of these differences.

The officer in charge of investigations at Nishtar Town police station said that the case was being looked into by the Model Town Investigation SP, while the SP said that the Nishtar Town investigation officer was following the case more closely.

SP Khattak said that he had had additional charge of operations for the last three days so he had not had enough time to look into the case properly.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2013.