Mashal Khan was never afraid to speak his mind. The 23-year-old journalism student was known for questioning his peers and speaking out against injustice and corruption.
But on 13 April – a few days after a heated discussion at his university in Mardan in north-western Pakistan – Khan was seized from his dorm room by a mob that stripped and beat him, then shot him dead.
Initial reports suggested that Khan had been accused of offending Islam – a dangerous charge in a society where perceived disrespect for the religion can ignite violent anger.
Following the lynching, Abdul Wali Khan niversity initially launched an investigation into Khan’s alleged blasphemy, rather than the murder. But institution’s provost hurriedly reversed course, saying the report had been “a clerical error”.
The case has sparked uproar in a country where blasphemy laws are often misused for revenge or personal gain.
Protesters gathered across Pakistan, calling for justice. On social media, Khan was treated as a hero. The prime minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the murder – although it took him two days. Even the prominent religious leader Mufti Naeem called Khan a martyr.
It was a rare instance in which broad swaths of Pakistani society came together to defend someone accused of blasphemy, but support for Khan stands in stark contrast to other such killings where victims have been the subject of public vituperation long after their deaths.
In 2011, Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab and a critic of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, was assassinated after voicing support for Asia Bibi, a Christian mother of five sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.
Even after Taseer’s killer, Mumtaz Qadri, was executed, public opinion was heavily against Taseer and Bibi – who remains in prison.
Khan’s murder was the first blasphemy killing at a Pakistani university, and the fact that the victim was by all accounts a respectful Muslim may help explain the response.
“A lot of people can identify with him” said the novelist Mohammed Hanif. “He was an average college student. And the landscape of the university was familiar to many.”
Graphic video footage of the lynching showed an angry mob beating and stomping Khan’s bloodied, lifeless body. Such brutality may also have fuelled the public revulsion, Hanif said. “Previous cases have been sanitised,” he said.
The killing demonstrates how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws – originally codified under 19th century British colonial rule – often provide the pretext for murderous violence motivated by personal gain or revenge.
“It has become extremely easy to accuse people of blasphemy,” said Tahira Abdullah, an independent human rights defender. “The very word raises emotions to such an extent that people take power into their own hands and do vigilante mob actions.”
Since 1990, at least 65 people have been murdered in Pakistan over blasphemy allegations, and responsibility for these extrajudicial killings lies partly with the country’s rules, said Abdullah.
“The state has not carried out deterring punishment for making false allegations,” she said.
One of Khan’s teachers at Abdul Wali Khan niversity said the accusation of blasphemy was cover for an act of “political revenge” after the student criticised the institution.
Three days before he was killed, Khan appeared on local television criticising the university administration for poor management.
According to a document that surfaced after the murder, the university had banned Khan and two other students from entry to campus while a committee investigated their alleged “blasphemous activities.” One of the other students mentioned was badly beaten up.
“Mashal was the only one who used to criticise them on local media,” Khan’s teacher said, requesting anonymity to avoid retribution. “The accusation of blasphemy was a tool to inflame sentiment.”
Khan had previously spent four years studying engineering in Russia, and adorned his dorm room with posters of Che Guevara and Karl Marx. “Be curious, crazy and mad,” read one of the quotes on his wall.
Friends remembered him as an inquisitive and pious Muslim intellectual. “He dreamed of a system where everyone could enjoy justice and equal rights. He was against corruption and the corrupt political setup. I can’t imagine him being against any religion,” said a friend, Saddam Hussain.
Khan’s father Muhammad Iqbal Khan said his son by nature was out of sync with the traditional values of Pakistan.
“He was the kind of a person this society can never tolerate,” he said. “You can call him a revolutionary, reformist, humanist, whatever, but he wasn’t a conservative person. My son was a voice of the voiceless.”
The Pakistani government recently tried to clamp down on blasphemous material on social media, asking Facebook and Twitter to help it identify users so they could be prosecuted. But such measures are only likely to provoke further violence, said Hanif.
“It is the stupidest thing anyone could ever do,” he said. “Coming from the government, you’re obviously stoking the fire, telling people to go out and be vigilantes.”
Police have arrested 33 people, including six university staff, in connection with the killing. They have found no evidence to support the allegation of blasphemy.
