More Than 100 Face Murder Charges for Lynching of Pakistani Christian Couple

The husband and wife were killed and their bodies burned by a mob after they were accused of desecrating the Quran.

The site where a young Christian couple were lynched at a brick factory in Pakistan’s Punjab province in November 2014.
The site where a young Christian couple were lynched at a brick factory in Pakistan’s Punjab province in November 2014. (photo: CNA/Legal Evangelical Association Development)

LAHORE, Pakistan — In Pakistan’s Punjab province, 106 people have been charged with the November 2014 murder of a Christian couple, who were attacked by a lynch mob and burned alive after being accused of blasphemy.

Pakistan’s anti-terrorism court charged that three Muslim clerics were involved in persistent provocative speech against the couple, while local media reported the clerics stirred up more than 400 people against Shahzad Masih and his wife, Shama, who was pregnant with the couple’s fourth child.

The Christian couple was killed and their bodies burned by a mob, after they were accused of desecrating the Quran. The couple lived in Kot Radha Kishan, a city located nearly 40 miles southwest of Lahore.

Another 32 alleged participants in the lynching are still at large, BBC News reported.

A peaceful joint Christian-Muslim protest was held in Lahore to protest the crime. Local Christian and Muslim leaders also met with the governor of Punjab about the case.

Before the married couple were killed on Nov. 4, angry villagers reportedly told them to convert to Islam to make amends for their alleged crime.

The couple worked at a brick kiln, and it has been reported that the kiln owner noticed Shama burning some belongings of her recently deceased father-in-law and charged that some pages she burned were from the Quran — he then detained them. They owed him money, and he refused to release them without being paid.

It was then announced from local mosques that the couple had desecrated the Quran, and a mob forced their way into the room where the Masihs were held and beat them with bricks and shovels. Reports vary as to whether or not the couple’s bodies were thrown into the kiln before or after their deaths.

Pakistan’s state religion is Islam, and around 97% of the population is Muslim. The nation has adopted sharia (Islamic law), which imposes strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad.

The blasphemy laws are said to be often used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities; while non-Muslims constitute only 3% of the Pakistani population, 14% of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

In 2011, the Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, a Muslim critic of the blasphemy laws, was assassinated. Shahbaz Bhatti, a Catholic and the only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, was also assassinated the same year by militant supporters of the blasphemy laws.