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PESHAWAR: A court has sentenced a man here to life imprisonment after convicting him of desecrating the Holy Quran in Khazana area around five years ago.
Additional district and sessions judge Mohammad Sher Ali Khan ruled that the prosecution had proved the charge of Quran burning against the accused “without any shadow of doubt.”
He extended the benefit of Section 382-B of the Code of Criminal Procedure to the convict under which his detention period prior to conviction will be counted in his prison term.
The judge ordered the burial of the burnt Quran pages in the ground after the expiry of the period for appeal against or revision of the verdict, and the disposal of such pleas.
He ‘intentionally, consciously’ committed offence, declares court
FIR of the act was registered at Khazana police station on Sept 17, 2018, under the Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 295-B (defiling of the copies of Holy Quran).
The complainant in the case was a resident of Garhi Khan Baba village on the outskirts of the provincial capital.
He said he and several other residents informed the police that they saw black smoke rise from a local mosque, went there and found the accused to be setting fire to the copies of the Holy Quran on the carpet.
He added that the residents overpowered the accused, extinguished the fire with water, and handed over him to the police along with the burnt copies of the Holy Quran.
The accused was indicted for the offence on Jan 12, 2019. He pleaded not guilty and recorded a confessional statement with a magistrate.
The accused insisted that he had fallen in love with a girl and requested his father and brothers to take his proposal of marriage to her family.
He said his family rejected his request, so he put forth that proposal to the girl’s family by himself but he was severely beaten up by her brothers.
The accused claimed that his father and brothers later forced him to take oath on the Holy Quran that he won’t visit the girl’s house again, and that they promised to go there with the marriage proposal.
He, however, said the promise wasn’t fulfilled.
The accused said he later became addicted to the ice drug (crystal meth) and got so fed up with life that he went to a nearby mosque and set fire to the copies of the Holy Quran believing that the act would prompt the people to kill him.
However, the accused retracted from that confessional statement during trial. His counsel claimed that the statement was obtained from him after severe torture.
He added that his client was a psychiatric patient and the investigation officer didn’t bother to produce him before a medical board for checking his mental status.
The court overruled the argument and observed that the accused became a drug addict over love failure and gradually adopted a deeply cynical attitude towards life.
It added that the accused wanted to end his life and thought about committing the sinister act of burning the Holy Quran as he was certain that the offensive act would prompt Muslims to lynch him.
The court declared that the accused “intentionally and consciously” committed the act of the Quran burning.