From KP’s Mishal Khan to Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara, Pakistan has seen several cases of mob attacks and in recent barbarism, two telecom company workers were beaten to death and lynched in Karachi over suspicion of being robbers.
The two telecom workers who were thought to be ‘kidnappers’ by people were mercilessly lynched by the enraged mob in Karachi’s Machar Colony area. The police arrived at the scene in Maripur, where the incident happened, and shifted the bodies of the killed employees of a telecommunication company to Civil Hospital Karachi.
According to SSP Kamyari Fida Hussain Janwari, Machar Colony is a backward area where a rumor was doing rounds that children were being abducted here. “When the poor telecom workers reached the place, people thinking them as kidnappers pounced on them,” he added. Such lynchings by mobs are becoming quite frequent in Pakistan and are a serious cause for alarm in society and the state.
There are several laws already in place but still, there is no safeguard for citizens, and unless the state formulates new social policies things will not get better. Complete implementation of the law is an absolute need of the hour.
In April 2017 an angry mob killed university student Mashal Khan when he was accused of posting blasphemous content online. A Christian couple were lynched and then burned in a kiln in Punjab in 2014, after being falsely accused of desecrating the Holy Quran. Pakistan’s history is speckled with many such incidents which must be brought to an end.
There can be no space for lynchings in a civilised society and law-enforcement officials need to confront this ugly trend before it results in further lawlessness. Simultaneously the state needs to ensure timely justice in such incidents so that this trend can be controlled and society can be saved from this ‘selective justice’.
