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CV NEWS FEED // Shagufta Kiran, a Christian woman from Rawalpindi, was recently sentenced to death under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, marking her as the latest victim in a long series of attacks on Christians in the country.
According to a September 20 report from AsiaNews, Shagufta was convicted of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws due to her comments in a WhatsApp group entitled “Pure Discussion,” a charge her family and lawyer say is baseless and rooted in personal grudges. She has been held in an isolation cell since the accusation in 2021.
Her four children expressed deep distress. “We have been crying since yesterday, and this news has brought even more pain and trauma to our entire family,” said Shagufta’s daughter Nihaal, according to AsiaNews.
Her legal team, supported by the Jubilee Campaign, a Netherlands-based advocacy group, is preparing an appeal to the High Court.
Shagufta’s case is the latest in a series of incidents where blasphemy allegations have led to severe punishments and even extrajudicial killings, highlighting the life-threatening risks Christians and other minorities continue to face in Pakistan.
As CatholicVote previously reported, in June, a Pakistani Christian was burned alive by a mob after being arrested for allegedly blaspheming the prophet Muhammad.
AsiaNews shared another case of Shahnawaz Kumbhar, a doctor from Umerkot, Sindh, who was accused of sharing blasphemous content through a Facebook account. Despite Dr. Kumbhar’s argument that he was framed and that the messages were shared from a fake account, he was killed by police in a staged encounter, which followed violent protests demanding his arrest.
According to the AsiaNews report, religious leaders later praised Dr. Kumbhar’s killer, Captain Asad Chaudhary, for the extrajudicial act. They compared Chaudhary to Mumtaz Qadri, who assassinated Salman Taseer, former governor of Punjab and vocal critic of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
AsiaNews reported that Halar Nawaz, a political analyst, condemned the growing trend of extrajudicial killings linked to blasphemy accusations.
“The fire of fake blasphemy cases has spread in all provinces of Pakistan,” Nawaz stated.
Other instances of anti-Christian attacks in Pakistan reported by CatholicVote include a 13-year-old Christian boy who was poisoned for refusing to recite an Islamic prayer and two Christian women who were attacked by a man wielding an ax.
Additionally, in May, two Christian shop owners, an elderly man and his son, were attacked by a mob after burned pages of the Quran were allegedly found in their trash cans. The father was killed in the assault.
