A Chinese engineer working on the Dasu hydropower project in Kohistan district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, was taken into police custody as an angry mob gathered outside his office to attack him, for allegedly making blasphemous remarks during a workplace argument.
The police had taken the employee of China Gezhouba Group Company into custody “to avert a serious situation” after enraged labourers gathered outside his office apparently with the intent of attacking him for alleged blasphemous remarks.
The engineer was accused of blasphemous remarks during a workplace dispute about the slow pace of work during Ramzan, the Islamic month of fasting, South China Morning Post reported.
People in protest also blocked the Karakoram Highway, the sole overland road connecting Pakistan to China, as the news of the engineer’s alleged blasphemy spread to neighbouring villages.
Police and paramilitary soldiers had to intervene to save the worker from the enraged mob and it took them four hours to disperse the crowd.
In December 2021, Sri Lankan man, Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana, working in Pakistan for 11 years was lynched by a mob over blasphemy allegations.
Kumara was beaten, killed and later set on fire by a mob in Sialkot. An Anti-Terrorism Court awarded death sentences to six convicts.
Blasphemy law is often misused in Pakistan to settle personal disputes.
