Pakistani police officer kills man accused of blasphemy

By Saleem Ahmad

QUETTA (Reuters) - A police officer killed a man being held in custody on suspicion of blasphemy charges in southern Pakistan, police said on Thursday.

Muhammad Baloch, the senior superintendent of police in Quetta, the provincial capital of southwestern Balochistan, said that the police officer accused of the killing had been arrested.

The officer, who he did not name, had accessed a police station where a man accused of blasphemy was being held by pretending he was his relative before opening fire on him.

The man accused of blasphemy had been taken into custody earlier in the week and moved to a more heavily fortified station due to a huge mob that gathered and demanded the man be handed over to them.

Blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. No one has been executed by the state for it, but numerous accused have been lynched by outraged mobs.

Blasphemy accusations fuelled mobs of people that attacked Christian neighbourhoods in eastern Punjab province last year, displacing hundreds.

In June, another mob beat a man to death in northern Pakistan after accusing him of burning pages of the Koran.

(Reporting by Saleem Ahmad in Quetta; Writing by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Christina Fincher)

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