{"id":15072,"date":"2022-04-18T22:17:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T22:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/?p=15072"},"modified":"2022-04-18T22:17:13","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T22:17:13","slug":"sri-lankan-manager-lynching-case-6-sentenced-to-death-9-to-life-imprisonment-by-pakistani-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/sri-lankan-manager-lynching-case-6-sentenced-to-death-9-to-life-imprisonment-by-pakistani-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lankan Manager Lynching Case: 6 Sentenced to Death – 9 to Life Imprisonment by Pakistani Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Islamabad: A court in Pakistan has sentenced 6 people to death after convicting them for their roles in last year\u2019s vigilante killing of a Sri Lankan factory manager accused by workers of committing blasphemy that they failed to prove.<\/h4>\n

The 6 men sentenced to death were convicted of murder of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana in a case that outraged many Pakistanis. The Anti-Terrorism Court in Lahore, set up inside a high-security prison, also gave life sentences to 9 people, 5 years\u2019 jail to one, and 2-year sentences to 72, according to a statement from the public prosecutor.<\/h4>\n

Diyawadana was killed in December by workers at a sports equipment factory in Pakistan\u2019s eastern Sialkot district where he was a manager.<\/h4>\n

Few issues are as galvanising in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynchings.<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe prosecution team worked very hard to present its case to the court and to reach this judgement,\u201d Abdul Rauf Wattoo, the lead public prosecutor, told AFP.<\/h4>\n

\u201cWe are satisfied with the outcome.\u201d<\/h4>\n

The special anti-terror court was established to speed up justice in high profile cases that can otherwise spend years being processed.<\/h4>\n

At the time of the killing, local police officials told AFP that rumours spread that Diyawadana had torn down a religious poster and thrown it in the dustbin.<\/h4>\n

Several gruesome video clips shared on social media showed a mob beating the prone victim while chanting slogans against blasphemy. Other clips showed Diyawadana\u2019s body set ablaze.<\/h4>\n

Many in the mob made no attempt to hide their identity and some took selfies in front of the burning corpse.<\/h4>\n

Rights groups say accusations of blasphemy can often be wielded to settle personal vendettas, with minorities largely the target.<\/h4>\n

In April 2017 an angry mob lynched university student Mashal Khan when he was accused of posting blasphemous content online.<\/h4>\n

A Christian couple was lynched and their remains burned in a kiln in Punjab in 2014 after being falsely accused of desecrating the Quran.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Islamabad: A court in Pakistan has sentenced 6 people to death after convicting them for their roles in last year\u2019s vigilante killing of a Sri Lankan factory manager accused by workers of committing blasphemy that they failed to prove. The 6 men sentenced to death were convicted of murder of Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[566,2385,2386,48,2384,2387,470],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15074,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15072\/revisions\/15074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistanintheworld.pk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}