ISLAMABAD: A mob enraged by a local’s murder over a trivial parking dispute snatched the suspect, a watchman, from police and lynched him in the mountainous Galiyat region of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday. Several police officers were wounded in the violence in a neighbourhood under the jurisdiction of Changla Gali police station, around 80km from Islamabad.
Police said Imran Abbasi, a local, had parked his car in the designated area of a housing society and left for home. When he returned the next day, he got into a fight with the watchman, Khan Zaman, who allegedly stabbed him to death and wounded his brother.
As word spread about the murder, a mob milled in the area and burned down five houses in the residential society.
Police apprehended the culprit, who was hiding in the basement of a building, and were about to take him away when the mob swooped on him and beat him to death with sticks and stones.
Lynchings are common in Pakistan and several instances of mob violence have taken place in the past decade. Many people have been lynched for alleged blasphemy, while mobs have also murdered suspects in street crimes.
In June 2024, a suspected robber was lynched by a mob in the southern port city of Karachi. The suspect, armed with a pistol, had attempted to rob a citizen, who put up resistance and was joined by others standing nearby. The mob got hold of the suspect and hit him with blunt weapons, resulting in his death on the spot.
In May 2024, another mob lynched a suspected robber in Karachi’s Orangi town while police saved his accomplice from being killed.
The same month, police rescued a Christian man from angry people, who wanted to lynch him and attacked the homes of other minority members in Punjab’s Sargodha district on charges of alleged blasphemy. Workers at a Sialkot garment factory tortured and burned to death their Sri Lankan general manager in 2023 for alleged blasphemy.