Lynching of Priyantha Kumara

Diyawadanage Don Nandasiri Priyantha Kumara was a 49-year-old Sri Lankan production engineer and factory manager who was killed by a mob in Sialkot, Punjab, Pakistan, on 3 December 2021. Kumara, an ethnic Sinhalese Buddhist from Ganemulla, Gampaha District, Sri Lanka, had lived and worked in Pakistan for eleven years, rising from an engineering role to General Superintendent at the Rajco Sporting Goods Manufacturing Company's garment factory in Sialkot. He was married with two sons.

According to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Focus Pakistan (HRFP), Kumara had asked a factory supervisor to help clean the premises ahead of renovation work, during which posters and stickers on the walls were removed. A local supervisor who understood the language on the posters gathered coworkers and townspeople, falsely accusing Kumara of blasphemy for tearing a poster inscribed with Islamic verses. Punjab Police Inspector General Rao Sardar Ali Khan stated that a mob of roughly 800 men gathered at the factory at around 10:00 on 3 December 2021. The mob searched for Kumara, found him on the factory roof, dragged and beat him; he was dead by 11:28, and his body was subsequently set on fire on Wazirabad Road. Members of the crowd chanted slogans associated with the Barelvi Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), which had been banned by the Pakistani government before the ban was lifted following a November 2021 agreement amid violent protests. TLP later officially distanced itself from the incident. A deputy manager at the factory, Malik Adnan, attempted to intervene and save Kumara but was outnumbered; he was later awarded Pakistan's Tamgha-i-Shujaat for bravery.

A postmortem found skull and jaw fractures as the cause of death, a spinal cord broken in three places, torture marks across the body, and burns covering 99 percent of the body. Police arrested more than 100 individuals, all reportedly linked to TLP, with one individual, Farhan Idrees, identified as a main organizer of the attack.

On 12 March 2022, Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Court indicted 89 individuals, including 80 adults and nine minors, all of whom pleaded not guilty. On 18 April 2022, the court sentenced six convicts to death and nine to life imprisonment, along with fines and compensation payments to Kumara's family. Seventy-two others received two years of rigorous imprisonment, and one other person received a five-year sentence; one person was acquitted.

The killing drew condemnation from Pakistani and Sri Lankan officials, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, who called it "a day of shame for Pakistan." Kumara's remains were repatriated to Sri Lanka with state honors on 6 December 2021. Sri Lanka's government approved a compensation grant to his family, and the Sialkot business community raised funds for his widow, who continued receiving his monthly salary.