Rimsha blasphemy case: Pakistan court acquits cleric
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Islamabad: A Pakistani court on Saturday acquitted prime suspect Khalid Chishti of all charges as six out of eight eyewitnesses changed their statements in a blasphemy case involving a Christian minor girl.
“The Islamabad High Court acquitted Khalid Chishti of all charges”, said a court official. Eye-witnesses said they made different statements earlier due to various pressures.
The cleric was accused of adding pages from the Quran to ashes seized from 14-year-old Rimsha Masih to implicate her and make the case stronger.
Three witnesses who had testified against the cleric had later backtracked from their statements saying that the police had “forced” them to testify on October 10, 2012.
Rimsha Masih was arrested under the blasphemy laws from the outskirts of Islamabad on August 16, 2012 after a mob of angry residents gathered at the Ramna police station and accused her of burning pages of the Quran.
The charges against Rimsha Masih led to the exodus of dozens of Christian families from the neighbourhood after Chishti, the imam of a mosque, allegedly issued a decree on his mosque’s loudspeaker to burn Christians of the Mehrabadi village alive.
Rimsha has fled to Canada with her family. She was detained at a maximum security prison for several weeks.
Although charges against Rimsha Masih were dropped, she and her family were forced into hiding after death threats.
The teenager has now settled in Canada with her family, although their exact location has not been made public.
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