Hindu teacher awarded life imprisonment over blasphemy
While the news of an 8-year-old boy charged with blasphemy isn’t old, now the sessions court in Pakistan’s Ghotki has sentenced a Hindu man to life in prison on charges of blasphemy. Nautan Lal has been fined Rs.50,000 as well as per reports by Samaa TV. Nautan Lal has been in jail since 2019 as an undertrial prisoner.
A case against Nautan Lal was registered under Section 295-C (use of derogatory remarks) and has been sent back to Central Prison in Sukkur. In the past two years, his requests for bail have been rejected twice, the report said.
Additional Sessions Judge Mumtaz Ali Solangi delivered the verdict. It has taken the court two years to pass the final order.
On September 14, 2019, a video was shared on social media in which a teenager, a first-year Intermediate student, claimed that the owner of Ghotki’s Sindh Public Higher Secondary School had blasphemed himself.
According to teachers, however, Nautan Lal was just visiting that day. He does not actually teach at his school. He is a physics teacher at Government Degree College Ghotki, the report said.
Soon after, the head of a madrassa, Mufti Adul Karim Sayeedi of Jamaat Ahle Sunnat, registered a blasphemy case against the school owner.
Many parts saw a violence outbreak in the district on the night the case was registered. As the news spread, masked men attacked the Sacho Satram Dham temple in Ghotki. They ransacked the temple, damaged its idols, and battered its blue and green walls, Samaa TV reported.
Earlier, an eight-year-old Hindu boy was held in protective police custody in East Pakistan. He is the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in Pakistan. The boy’s family went into hiding and many others from the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a radical Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple there.
[With Inputs from IANS]
PGurus is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel and stay updated with all the latest news and views
For all the latest updates, download PGurus App.
