Mob killing in Nowshera

In a chilling incident in a village near Nowshera on Wednesday, a frenzied mob killed a man whom his wife had had accused of desecrating the Holy Quran. According to details, the man and his wife had a quarrel, and, according to her account, she had brought in the Holy Book to swear by it but he desecrated it. It was a case of her word against his, and her malice was obvious since she did admit to having had a quarrel with him. It is plain that she could have had a motive to implicate him in a false blasphemy case, knowing its fatal consequences.
The case was reported to the police and a local cleric who took upon himself to declare the accused an infidel, liable for punishment with death. And death came to him swiftly in the form of a 400-strong mob chasing him as he kept begging for his life and tried to escape by climbing a tree.
All in vain. Somebody fired a gunshot, killing him on the spot. Some press reports say that his family refused to accept his body, repeating the words of the cleric who had pronounced death sentence that he was an 'infidel.'
It may be recalled that some years ago, in an identical incident in Gujranwala a feuding wife had accused her husband of desecrating the Holy Quran, following which mobs had burnt the man to death and dragged his body all over the town. It turned later that he was a 'hafiz' of Quran, and that he would be the last person to commit the act of blasphemy for which he was punished so brutally.
It should be a matter of grave concern for all decent people that our social environment has become so oppressive that clerics feel free to disregard the law of the land to declare people infidels and liable to raw mob justice.
If at all the victim was guilty of having committed blasphemy, there is a law to deal with such cases. In fact, a case had been filed with the area police. The alleged blasphemer should have been given the chance to clear his name; instead he was murdered in cold blood on the instigation of a village cleric. That cleric must be held accountable for inflaming public passions and the consequent killing of the accused.
Strange as it is, the police are reported to claim that they do not know who the 'maulvi' was though they say they intend to arrest him. They must do that sooner rather than later so that he pays for instigating the murder of a man who could be innocent of the crime he was alleged to have committed. It is imperative that swift and severe action is taken so that no one in future dares take upon himself to misuse religion, deliberately or out of ignorance, to harm human life.