On Tuesday, A sessions court in Lahore sentenced a Pakistani Christian Asif Pervaiz to death after convicting him of sending blasphemous texts.
Since 2013, Asif Pervaiz age 37 years remained in custody due to blasphemy charges. A supervisor of the garment factory leveled the charge against him where Parvaiz used to work. The supervisor accused him of using derogatory remarks for the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) over text messages.
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Additional Sessions Judge Mansoor Ahmad Qureshi sentenced Parvaiz a three year of punishment in a prison for misusing his phone to send derogatory blasphemous text messages. According to the court orders, he was also fined Rs 50,000 and then “he shall be hanged by his neck till his death.”
The convicted person claimed that the supervisor tried to convert him to the Islam religion and that he accused him blasphemy right after he quit his job.
The convicted Christian man has denied all charges against him and said that all ‘blasphemous’ texts were merely questions that were forwarded as per the lawyer of Pervaiz Saiful Malook. “This case should have been thrown out by the judge,” Malook said, adding he would appeal the verdict in the Lahore High Court. “He has already spent seven years awaiting the court’s decision. Who knows how many more years he will have to wait till this is over?”
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Moreover, according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, more than 80 people are imprisoned in Pakistan on such charges and half of them experienced lifetime imprisonment or death patently. Such like that a few months back, the US citizen of Pakistani origin on trial was shot dead in Peshawar in the courtroom for blasphemy charges.
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