Digital Desk: A local court in Pakistan's southern Sindh province sentenced a Hindu teacher to life in jail on blasphemy charges on Tuesday.Additional Sessions Judge Murtaza Solangi in Ghotki, Sindh, fined Pakistani ₹50,000 from the teacher, identified as Nautan Lal.
Lal has been in jail as an undertrial prisoner since 2019. It took the court two years to condemn him. His bail requests have been denied twice in the last two years.
Lal was arrested in September 2019 after a video of a public school intermediate student accusing the Hindu teacher of blasphemy against the Prophet went viral on social media.
The student said that Lal, the school's owner and a physics instructor at a local government degree college, had visited the school that day and committed the crime.
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Soon after, Mufti Abdul Karim Saeedi, a local cleric and leader of the Jamaat-e-ahle Sunnat party, filed a blasphemy charges against Lal with the police.
As word spread, a riot ensued in the town, and a mob attacked the Sacho Satram Dham Temple in Ghotki, causing damage to its idols.
Jay Kumar, the curator of the Sacho Satram temple, reportedly claimed that roughly 50 masked individuals attacked the temple, but that 500 Muslims afterwards arrived and guarded it throughout the night.
Former military dictator General Ziaul Haq enacted Pakistan's blasphemy laws in the 1980s. Although no one has been executed as a result of these rules, some persons have been killed on the allegation of blasphemy.
According to human and civil rights organisations, the blasphemy legislation is frequently utilised to resolve personal enmities and land conflicts, especially in rural areas.
Hindus form the biggest minority community in Pakistan.
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