Faith trial: Blasphemy accused denied bail

Abdul Shakoor and Liaquat Ali are accused of blasphemy by reading the kalma incorrectly.

LAHORE:

An additional district and sessions judge on Wednesday dismissed the fourth bail petition of a man accused of blasphemy.

Abdul Shakoor alias Baba Sahib and Liaquat Ali are accused of blasphemy by reading the kalma incorrectly.

The first bail petition Ali filed was dismissed on May 25, 2013, and the second on June 28. The third was dismissed as withdrawn on February 18, 2014.

In the fourth petition Ali said he was innocent. He said that he wasn’t even nominated in the FIR. Furthermore the FIR did not specify a date or time of occurrence, he said. Ali also said that the complainant had said that the incident had taken place during the night, “but then how could he identify the suspects if it was dark?”  He said the prosecution did not have enough evidence against him.

Counsel for the complainant Ghulam Mustafa Chaudhry said the complainant had heard Ali recite the kalma incorrectly. Chaudhry said the complainant had a recording to prove that.

Qari Shaukat, the complainant, said that he had woken up early in the morning to offer tahajjud prayers and heard Ali reading the kalma incorrectly on Abdul Shakoor’s instructions. Shaukat said that he had stopped them from doing so but they used abusive language.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20^th, 2014.