Ahl-e-Hadith men jailed in Blasphemy case

A magistrate has sent three men accused of burning pages of the Holy Quran to jail.

LAHORE: A magistrate has sent the three men accused of burning pages of the Holy Quran to jail on judicial remand after Batapur police declared them guilty.

Apparently, the police declared two of the accused, Sheikh Shahid and Nawazish, guilty for not providing statements against the third man, Shahid Hassan Butt, an Ahl-e-Hadith member and secretary general of the mosque committee.

One of the complainants, Haji Yasin, told The Express Tribune that although only Butt was responsible for burning the pages, the other two men were sent to jail for favouring him in their statements. He said they had tried to conceal facts by denying that Butt was burning the pages. He said that the Ahl-e-Sunnat members had asked the police to implicate them in the case so as to teach them a lesson.

Yasin said Shahid and Nawazish had persisted in saying that Butt had stuffed the pages in a sack and thrown it in the canal. The police, he said, wanted them to say that they saw Butt burning the pages.

Abid Hassan Butt, brother of Shahid Butt, said that the investigation officer, Inspector Aftab Hashmi, had been deliberately unfair to his brother and the other men. He said that Inspector Hashmi being a Shi’ite had a religious prejudice against them. He said that the inspector had also tortured his 14-year-old nephew Sami when he refused to record a statement against Shahid Butt.

Inspector Hashmi said that the three accused were found equally responsible for burning the Holy Quran. He said he had no personal grudges against the accused, nor was he influenced in his investigation. He said he had recovered a stick with which the accused had been poking the pages to burn them completely. He also said that two pages and ashes of burnt pages were recovered and were proof of the occurrence of the incident. Inspector Hashmi said that according to the accused burning old pages of the Holy Quran was allowed in the Ahl-e-Hadith sect but it was burning them in a dirty place which was defiling it, this, he said, was what the accused had done.On October 3 local Ahl-e-Sunnat clerics and their followers accused Butt and his business partners Sheikh and Nawazish of burning pages of the Holy Quran and registered an FIR against them under Section 295-B of Pakistan Penal Code at the Batapur Police Station.

A Jamia Naeemia mufti has given a fatwa in favour of the accused, declaring them innocent.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2010.