Lynching of Mushtaq Ahmed

Mushtaq Ahmed was a 41-year-old man from a village in Khanewal District, Punjab, Pakistan. According to the local police chief, he had been mentally ill for roughly 15 years and would frequently leave home for days at a time. In February 2022, he was killed by a mob in the town of Tulamba after being accused of desecrating copies of the Quran.

The custodian of a local mosque reported seeing smoke inside the building and finding a burned copy of the Quran, and said he saw a man attempting to burn another. He alerted others and contacted the police. A police officer and two subordinates responded and tried to take the man into custody, but a crowd pelted them with stones, seriously injuring the officer. Before police reinforcements arrived, the mob seized Ahmed, stoned him to death, and hung his body from a tree. The crowd was estimated at around 300 people.

Authorities subsequently detained roughly 80 people in connection with the killing and reviewed video footage to identify participants. Then-Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack, said police had "failed in their duty," and stated there would be "zero tolerance for anyone taking the law into their own hands."

The accusation of blasphemy against Ahmed was never tested in any court; he was killed before any legal process could take place. Blasphemy is a capital offence under Pakistani law, and rights groups have long documented that blasphemy accusations are frequently used to target religious minorities or to settle personal disputes, and that mob violence has followed such accusations in a number of cases. The killing came roughly two months after the mob killing of a Sri Lankan factory manager accused of blasphemy in Sialkot.