An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.
The boy is accused of deliberately urinating on a carpet in the library of a local madrassah where Muslim religious books were kept. The decision to indict and imprison him shocked many in the country, and he was eventually released on bail to house arrest after a week in custody.
The decision to release him, however, led to fury among local Muslims, who promptly went on a rampage and set fire to a nearby Hindu temple. 20 people have been arrested in connection with the arson.
Meanwhile, the local Hindu population in the Rahim Yar Khan district is living in fear of reprisals, and many have fled their homes and abandoned their businesses.
“We were forced to leave our stores and homes in fear,” one of the boy’s relatives told The Guardian. “We haven’t seen any genuine effort on the part of the state or the police to protect minorities, or to punish those who harmed us.”
Troops have allegedly been deployed to the area to put down any further unrest.
Since a change to the law in 1986, blasphemy charges can carry the death penalty in Pakistan. No one has actually been put to death on such charges to date, with most sentences being commuted to imprisonment. However, those accused are often murdered by extremist mobs, and their families also often come under attack. The most frequent targets of blasphemy allegations are members of the Hindu and Christian minorities in the country, who are automatically suspect.
Speaking from an undisclosed location, a member of the boy’s family told The Guardian: “He is not even aware of such blasphemy issues … and he doesn't understand what his crime was or why he was kept in jail for a week.”
Ras Kumar, a Hindu member of the Islamabad parliament, tweeted: “The attack on the temple and the accusations of blasphemy leveled against an eight-year-old boy have shocked me. Hundreds of homes belonging to members of the Hindu community have been abandoned under threat of violence.”