Aroosa Khan’s son was chatting on WhatsApp but suddenly found himself the target of “vigilante” investigators who accused him of having committed blasphemy online, a crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan.
The 27-year-old is one in hundreds of young men standing trial in Pakistan courts accused of making blasphemous statements online or in WhatsApp groups, an offence for which arrests have exploded in recent years.
Many of the cases are being brought to trial by private “vigilante groups” led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.
The families of young Pakistanis, including doctors, engineers, lawyers, and accountants, say that their relatives were duped into sharing blasphemous content by strangers online before being arrested.
Our lives have been turned upside down,” Khan told AFP, saying that her son, who has not been named for security reasons, had been tricked into sharing blasphemous content in the messaging app.
One local police report suggests that the vigilantes may be motivated by financial gains.
One such group was responsible for the conviction of 27 people who have been sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty over the past three years.
Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated accusations can incite public outrage and lead to lynchings.
While they date back to colonial times, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were ramped up in the 1980s when dictator Zia ul-Haq campaigned to “Islamicise” society.
AFP has attended multiple court hearings in the capital Islamabad, where young men are being prosecuted by private vigilante groups and the FIA for blasphemous online content.
Among them is Aroosa’s son — who had joined a WhatsApp group for job-seekers and was contacted by a woman.
She sent him an image of women with Quranic verses printed on their bodies, his mother said, adding that the contact then “denied having sent it and asked Ahmed to send it back to her to understand what he was talking about”.
He was later arrested and prosecuted by the Federal Investigation Agency