27-year-old Islamabad resident Aneeqa Ateeq is on death row after a court found her guilty of committing “blasphemy” on Whatsapp last year. Aneeqa Ateeq has maintained that she was deliberately dragged into a religious discussion by her accuser after she refused his advances. The Lahore High Court is yet to take up her appeal against the death sentence.
The case was lodged with the Rawalpindi cyber crime cell of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on May 13, 2020, on the complaint of Hasnat Farooq who claimed she was his friend and forwarded him blasphemous content through WhatsApp.
Ateeq had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Ateeq had said in a statement to the court that her accuser had deliberately dragged her into a religious discussion so he could collect evidence and take revenge after she refused “to be friendly” towards him. The two had met on a popular online multiplayer game and continued communicating on WhatsApp.
A Rawalpindi court sentenced Aneeqa Ateeq to death for “insulting the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)”. She was also sentenced to ten years in prison for “intending to outrage religious feelings, three years in prison for “posing as Muslim” and seven years in prison for “inciting interfaith hatred”. Her prison sentences are reported to run concurrently. She was also fined 200,000 rupees.
