Pakistan student gets death sentence over 'blasphemous' WhatsApp text: Report

A 22-year-old student in Pakistan has been sentenced to death on charges of blasphemy (insulting God) over a WhatsApp message. While giving the verdict, a court in Pakistan's Punjab province said that the student has been given death sentence for the pictures and videos which contained derogatory words about Prophet Muhammad. Another 17-year-old student was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty because he is a minor.

The punishment for blasphemy in Pakistan is death. Although no one has been hanged by the state so far, many accused of blasphemy have been beaten to death by angry mobs. The action against the student was taken following a complaint lodged by the cyber crime unit of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in Lahore in 2022. The complainant alleged that he received the videos and pictures from three different mobile phone numbers.

The FIA said it examined the complainant's phone and found that "obscene material" had been sent to him. Although lawyers for both students have said they have been "falsely implicated", the BBC reported that the father of the death row convict will file an appeal in the Lahore High Court.

Earlier in August last year, more than 80 Christian houses and 19 churches were vandalized in Pakistan after two Christian brothers were accused of "desecrating" the Quran. In one of Pakistan's most high-profile cases, Christian woman Asia Bibi was at the center of a decade-long blasphemy controversy that ultimately saw her death sentence overturned and ended with her fleeing the country.