Rimsha Masih blasphemy case: ''Justice defeated''

Perhaps one should not be surprised that a trial court has exonerated Khalid Jadoon Chishti of all charges in the concocted blasphemy case against a young Christian girl Rimsha Masih dating back to November 2012. His acquittal became inevitable when the witnesses in the case resiled from their original testimony that it was not Rimsha but the cleric who had desecrated the Quran and falsely accused the girl. In court they stated they had been coerced by the police into pointing the finger of blame at Chishti. This flip-flop by the witnesses compelled the court to give a verdict in favour of the cleric. Whether the witnesses were lying then or now is difficult to prove. Their original statement, taken by the police in the absence of a magistrate, was nullified in court. However, one cannot rule out the possibility of pressure on the witnesses to take their words back. The history of blasphemy cases is riddled with such injustices. The accused in a blasphemy case, usually implicated on false charges, have either been killed through an engineered mob or incarcerated for an indefinite period, having all the doors to judicial recourse shut on them. Those brave few who dared raise their voice against this misuse of the blasphemy law were brutally murdered, such as the Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer and Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti. The irony is that the injustice is allowed to continue by maintaining the flawed blasphemy law intact, making no effort to improve the weak prosecution regime, and ignoring the urgent need for a witness protection system (which would also help in terrorism cases). All this enables false blasphemy accusers like Chishti to literally bet away with murder. Rimsha, who was falsely accused of desecrating the Quran by Chishti, the cleric of her neighbourhood mosque, was put in jail in August 2012 on blasphemy charges. The case caught worldwide attention because the girl was not only a minor but mentally challenged. It was not the first time that a Christian had to face this kind of ordeal at the hands of a few miscreants posing as offended Muslims. There are still many Christians, such as Aasia Masih (in defence of whom Salmaan Taseer paid with his life), and others, who are rotting in jail for lack of credible due process, a fundamental right of every citizen of Pakistan. Rimsha’s case was stage managed to panic the residents of the Christian slum in suburban Islamabad where she lived so that they would flee for fear of their lives, leaving the area free to be occupied by land grabbers on whose behest Chishti appears to have been working. Blasphemy charges have been used as a convenient tool by land mafias to get their dirty job done hidden behind the fig leaf of religion, as well as to settle scores, vendettas, etc. The recent incident of Joseph Colony in Lahore was another example of such skullduggery. The lacuna in the law of being able to get away scot-free with false blasphemy accusation must be plugged. If the government is unable to repeal or amend the blasphemy law, a cowardice on display by successive governments, at the very least the strengthening of the prosecution and witness protection system and penalties for false accusation must be introduced to earn our claim of a state and society wedded to the principles of justice.