Bureau Report
PESHAWAR: An elderly man was killed during the hearing of a blasphemy case against him at the Peshawar Judicial Complex on Wednesday.
A case had been registered against the deceased under blasphemy laws. The accused was brought to court from Peshawar Central Jail.
“During the hearing of the case, the complainant said that the accused was an Ahmadi and asked him to recite the Kalima-e-Tayyaba,” according to a lawyer who was present in the courtroom at the time of the incident. He added that the complainant then fired at the elderly man and killed him. The judicial complex is situated in a high-security zone on the main Khyber Road in the cantonment area where the provincial assembly building, the Peshawar High Court, chief minister’s secretariat and Governor House are also situated. Security at the main gate and inside the judicial complex is also high.
Peshawar Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Mohammad Ali Gandapur and SSP (operations) Mansoor Aman visited the courtroom where the man was killed. Gandapur said the shooter was “arrested on the spot”.
“At the moment we have little information but we have started investigation into the killing,” the CCPO said. Aman added that the weapon has also been recovered. Police shifted the body of the deceased, a resident of Board Bazaar, to the Khyber Medical University for post-mortem. Police said a first information report (FIR) had been registered against the deceased in 2018. According to the FIR, the complainant alleged that the deceased belong to the Ahmadi community and “befriended him on Facebook” and in subsequent conversations, claimed that he was the “fourteenth Mujaddid”.
