Dozens of workers at a factory in Karachi beat to death a Hindu colleague on Tuesday for alleged blasphemy, officials said. Jagdish Kumar, 27, was tortured and killed at the leather factory in Karachi for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), police and hospital officials said.
"Dozens of workers at the factory in the Korangi industrial area beat to death the Hindu worker over allegations that he spoke against the sanctity of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)," police superintendent Farrukh Bashir told AFP.
The mob was trying to burn the body when officers arrived and took it away, Bashir added. Police had made several arrests, he said, without giving numbers.
The body had various injuries, said a doctor at Karachi's Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, where it was taken for an autopsy. "The marks of torture and injuries caused by hard objects are visible on the body. The autopsy is going to be performed later," doctor Mohammad Saleem said.
Sindh government ordered an inquiry into the killing, home secretary Arif Ahmed Khan said. Hindus make up less than two percent of the population of this overwhelmingly Muslim nation of 160 million people. Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan, although no one has ever been executed for it, while communal tensions often run high whenever accusations of blasphemy are made.