New sub-section to be added to Section 297 of Pakistan Penal Code. PHOTO:FILE
With a number of cases in recent years of graves being desecrated, a private member bill was moved by Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Senator Col. (retd) Tahir Hussain Mashhadi, that called for amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code of 1860 to include clauses on desecration of graves.
"If any person without sanction of law authority digs up and in any way desecrates a grave, steals, damages, removes or in way physically violates a dead body which is in or stolen from a grave shall if found guilty of such an offence be liable to punishment of life imprisonment," the bill read.
The proposed changes were passed unanimously by the house, as a result of which a new sub-section has been added to Section 297 Pakistan Penal Code 1860.
The bill will now by sent to the National Assembly for a vote.
In recent years there have been a number of cases of graves being desecrated.
In April 2011 two brothers had been arrested in Bhakkar, Punjab after they were found to have disinterred corpses in the local graveyard for the purpose of eating them.
As recently as October 2013, the body of a local Hindu had been dug out and placed outside the graveyard in Pangrio, Sindh. The body had been dug out by a Muslim mob who argued that a Hindu could not be buried in a Muslim graveyard.
COMMENTS (5)
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Useless, what are they doing with those who killed thousands in country?
This is ridiculous. Desecrating a grave is an ambiguous term. It could be interpreted in any number of ways. For example if I were to simply walk over a grave that would count as desecration in Islam. Secondly, life imprisonment?!! Talk about overkill!
Is the country making a run for the prehistoric period; what is the life time of the grave? Dissolve the Senate and replace it with the upper house made up of provincial chief Ministers!
Rex Minor
How about a law against eating dead people .. just in case someone gets hungry before they get buried?
"Senate votes in favour of awarding life terms for desecrating graves"
Unless the grave belongs to someone who is a minority, committed blasphemy or was an Ahmedi or something... in which case the senate will be quieter the the deafness inside the grave itself...