Two persons convicted in lynching case of Lankan national in Pakistan file appeal against anti-terror court verdict

At least two persons convicted by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court for their involvement in the lynching of a Sri Lanka citizen in Punjab Province over blasphemy allegations have challenged the court's verdict, claiming ''glaring contradictions'' between the complainant and the witnesses in the case.

In an appeal filed by the two accused, Taimoor Ahmed and Muhammad Ahmed, their lawyer termed the conviction illegal and said that his clients were not named in the FIR and in a supplementary statement. The lawyer said no identification parade was held, adding that the name of the eyewitness was not even mentioned in the FIR, The Express Tribune newspaper reported, Taimoor was sentenced to death sentence while Muhammad had been handed out eight years of rigorous imprisonment for involvement in the crime, which brought bad name for Pakistan.

The Anti-Terrorism Court in Lahore on April 18 sentenced six people to death and varying jail terms to 81 others for their involvement in the brutal murder of 47-year-old Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara, who was a general manager at a private garment factory in Pakistan's Sialkot district, some 100 kms from Lahore.

A mob of over 800 men, including supporters of radical Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, attacked a garment factory and lynched its general manager Kumara and burned his body over allegations of blasphemy on December 3 last year.

Some factory employees had accused Kumara of tearing a poster of TLP inscribed with Islamic verses during his inspection of machines in the factory after which the mob dragged him out of the factory, brutally beat him and killed him before setting the body on fire.

After Kumara's murder, some 200 suspects were taken into custody. However, over 100 of them were subsequently released after no evidence of their involvement in the incident was found.

The appeal filed against the verdict claimed that "there are glaring contradictions between the complainant and other witnesses which makes the case of the prosecution doubtful.'' According to the appeal, the lynching took place out of reach of the CCTV cameras but the court still admitted "inadmissible evidence of footage of mobile phones". It said the makers of these videos neither appeared before the court nor did they share the original source of the video, the daily said.

The two convicted persons prayed that the impugned judgement be set aside.

Pakistan has extremely strict blasphemy laws against defaming Islam, including the death penalty, and rights campaigners say they are often used to settle scores in the Muslim majority country.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)