Crowd of stone men in Pakistan for burning the Quran

An angry mob stoned a man in a remote village in eastern Pakistan for allegedly setting fire to a Quran at a mosque yesterday. A mosque employee said he saw the man do this.

According to a police spokesperson, the mosque employee first told others what he had seen before informing the police. The police reportedly arrived quickly, but the man was already surrounded by an angry mob. When the police tried to arrest her, people started throwing stones at her. Several officers were also injured.

The man would have set fire to at least one Koran and wanted to light another. People, meanwhile, would arrive for evening prayers and would have shouted at him to stop.

Disappeared for days

Before reinforcements arrived at the mosque, the man was already dead and his body had been hung from a tree. According to witnesses, the police were there before the stonings began, but the mob managed to snatch the man from the hands of the officers. They tried to save him, but the officers who did were beaten.

The victim was from a nearby village. The local police chief told the AP news agency he was not mentally well. “According to his family, he was often missing for days, begging and eating whatever he could find.” His body has since been returned to the family.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted that his country has “zero tolerance” for people who “take justice into their own hands”. Measures are taken against the perpetrators of the lynching.