Hundreds of people in Pakistan have fallen victim to an extortion racket in which Christians and others are wrongly accused of posting blasphemous material online. Islamists are said to be colluding with Pakistani officials in the scam that has led to a rise in blasphemy prosecutions.
The number of blasphemy prosecutions in Pakistan is surging – in part owing to a sharp increase in allegations of “online blasphemy” brought by vigilante groups against young people, often Christians. Sometimes these groups use entrapment techniques to persuade people to upload blasphemous content. At other times they hack into individuals’ social media accounts and post blasphemous material themselves.
Christians, a small and persecuted minority in Pakistan, are particularly vulnerable to false accusations of blasphemy against Islam.
Human rights attorneys told a news conference in Islamabad on January 10 that over the past few years, 450 people had been imprisoned based on false accusations of online blasphemy lodged by a single criminal group.
Speaking at the news conference, the lawyers said the gang had a connection to the radical Islamist Tehreek-e-Labbaik movement, the religious liberty website Bitter Winter reported. Gang members would post blasphemous content online in the name of innocent individuals and then report them to the police. When the police pressed charges, the criminals would blackmail their victims, demanding hefty payments in return for having the charges dropped. Those who did not, or could not, pay ended up facing prosecution and a potential death sentence.
One of those imprisoned is the son of Saeeda Bibi. Blind in both eyes, he was arrested despite never having posted on social media, she testified. Despite her son’s obvious innocence, Pakistani officials asked her for a bribe. Even after she paid it, they did not release him. Her son remains in jail.
Hundreds of victims are being held in prison, where five have already died as a result of torture, according to the lawyers.
Describing the gang as a “blasphemy business group”, the lawyers said it had entrapped victims with the active involvement of federal investigators, Morning Star News reported.
This finding of official involvement was also included in a report by Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) based on an investigation into blasphemy cases between October 2023 and October 2024.
“The investigation’s findings highlighted a troubling trend: a sharp increase in registration of blasphemy cases, majority of whom were initiated by the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cybercrime unit, frequently in collaboration with a private entity,” the report said. It called for “a comprehensive review of the roles and accountability of both government and private entities” involved in blasphemy cases.
The NCHR further noted a threefold increase in blasphemy cases in the first seven months of 2024 compared with 2023 as a whole.
And the trend appears to be continuing into 2025. On January 24, a court in Rawalpindi sentenced four men to death for allegedly posting blasphemous content online.
One of the lawyers present at the Islamabad news conference was Supreme Court Advocate Rana Abdul Hameed. Hameed is the attorney for a Christian mother of four, Shagufta Kiran, who was arrested in July 2021 on blasphemy charges stemming from material she allegedly shared in a WhatsApp group.
According to Hameed, Kiran’s accuser, Shiraz Ahmad Farooqi, is the leader of this extortion group. Hameed’s claim is backed by a report published by the Special Branch of the Punjab Police in January 2024.
Hameed said that the false cases had “raised serious questions about the integrity of Pakistan’s legal system,” Morning Star News reported.
“These cases are not only baseless but also a stain on the judiciary,” Hameed said. Kiran was sentenced to death on September 18, 2024. In 2022, in a letter to Pakistan’s then justice minister, CSI had called for the release of Kiran and nine other individuals charged with blasphemy.
In an encouraging development, a court on January 25 acquitted Christian twin brothers on the grounds that the blasphemy charges against them were unproven. Eighteen-year-old Sahil and Rahil Masih had been accused of desecrating a Qur’an at a village festival last August.
CSI supported the twins’ family during Sahil and Rahil’s incarceration, meeting their legal fees, relocating the family to a safer area and helping the parents set up a small business.
