News Desk
A judge in Sargodha, Punjab Province, has granted bail to 52 Muslims accused of killing a Christian man over a false blasphemy accusation. The decision, influenced by a reportedly poor police investigation and pressure from an Islamist extremist party, has shocked and disappointed the Christian community and human rights advocates.
Special Judge of the Anti-Terrorism Court Sargodha, Muhammad Abbas, granted bail on June 13 to the suspects, including three individuals named in the First Information Report (FIR), in connection with the lynching of 74-year-old Nazeer Masih Gill on May 25 in the Mujahid Colony area of Sargodha. Gill succumbed to his injuries on June 3 at a military hospital in Rawalpindi.
Attorney Asad Jamal, who anticipated the release, criticized the police’s conduct as “suspicious from the onset.” Jamal pointed out that the police failed to preserve the crime scene or interrogate the detained suspects properly. “The suspects were arrested and sent to jail the same day, whereas the police should have sought their physical remand for interrogation to record their statements linking their involvement in the incident,” he said.
Jamal, part of a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), termed Gill’s lynching a “calculated assault, manipulated through religious fervor to gain maximum leverage.”
The court’s decision was based on the lack of evidence directly linking the suspects to the crime. The judge noted that police had not attributed specific roles to the suspects, and none of the 18 witnesses had identified them. “Moreover, nothing has been recovered from their possession,” the judge added. The suspects were released on bail against surety bonds of 100,000 rupees (US$360) each.
The victim’s son, Sultan Gill, expressed shock at the release, revealing that police had neither recorded their statements nor informed them about the bail applications. “The news of the bails came as a surprise to us,” he said. He also mentioned that police had increased deployment in their area as most of the men freed on bail are from their neighborhood. “We are clueless and don’t know where this case is heading. I don’t think we have any other option but to relocate from this city,” Sultan Gill added.
Human rights activist Kashif Aslam criticized the investigation as biased and called for justice for the vulnerable Christian family. He compared the case to previous incidents, such as in Shanti Nagar and Jaranwala, where poor investigations led to weak prosecutions.