By Mubasher Bukhari
A mob of factory employees in eastern Pakistan tortured and burned a Sri Lankan manager on Friday over apparent blasphemy in a "horrific" attack.
A police official in the eastern town of Sialkot, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said investigators believed the attackers had accused the manager of blasphemy for tearing down a poster with Islamic holy verses.
"The factory workers tortured the manager," said provincial government spokesman Hassan Khawar. "A total of 50 people so far have been identified and arrested."
Television footage showed crowds of hundreds of people in the streets of Sialkot, in the heart of Pakistan's most heavily industrialised region where much of the country's export industry is based.
Mob killings over accusations of blasphemy - a crime that can carry the death sentence - have been frequent in Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Friday's killing came only weeks after days of violent protests by the radical Tehrik-e-Labaik Pakistan movement, a Sunni Muslim group founded in 2015 to address actions it considers blasphemous to Islam.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lankan-manager-killed-by-mob-workers-pakistan-garment-factory-2021-12-03/
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