One year after the actual incident took place, a prayer leader of a Landhi mosque has implicated a bystander in a blasphemy case to settle scores with him as the latter has married a girl in the cleric’s family on freewill. Mohammad Akram, the father of the alleged accused, narrated the ordeal of his son to journalists at the Karachi Press Club. He said that in February 2011, some people had deliberately desecrated the pages of a sacred book in the Landhi neighbourhood and many people standing there had witnessed the incident including his son. The blasphemy case (FIR No. 57/2011) was registered with the police on the complaint of prayer leader Syed Muazzam Ali in February last year. Akram said his son had been residing near the house of his sister in the Landhi area for quite some time now, but recently married a girl, the daughter of Khalid Farooq, without the consent of her father. The girl’s father and her relatives started threatening the man’s family of dire consequences as the girl had eloped with Akram’s son. “Later on, the girl’s family approached their relative Ali,” Akram said. “Working at the behest of his relatives, the plaintiff in the blasphemy case deliberately implicated his son in that case of February last year.” Pleading that his son can’t even imagine desecrating the pages of any book, Akram said that he had approached the provincial law minister and some police officials to prove his son’s innocence but all in vain. “They say that as he has been nominated as an accused in the case, he should first surrender and then prove his innocence in the court,” Akram said. “There is no other choice for my son except to leave the country for the sake of his life.” Appealing for protection and justice, the man also said that the lives of his family and his daughter-in-law are also in danger.
