The Student Cleared After They Killed Him
A rumour that spread online accused Pakistani university student Mashal Khan of blasphemy, and a mob beat and shot him to death on campus in 2017. Investigators found no evidence against him, and courts later treated the killing as premeditated murder.
A rumour, then a mob
On April 13, 2017, a crowd of students at Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, attacked 23-year-old Mashal Khan inside a hostel. He was beaten, shot and left dead. According to Al Jazeera, the mob believed rumours that the undergraduate had committed blasphemy, an accusation that carries a potential death sentence under Pakistani law.
The allegation had circulated among the student body, tied to claims about material said to have been shared online. Reporting by Dawn noted that no blasphemy case had been registered against Khan before the attack and that police had not been investigating him on such charges when the mob formed.
Investigators found nothing
A joint investigation team appointed to examine the case reported in June 2017 that it had found no evidence Khan had committed blasphemy. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that investigators concluded the killing was premeditated rather than a spontaneous reaction to any offence.
Investigators said the motive lay elsewhere. Police concluded that university figures whom Khan had publicly criticised had conspired to spread a false blasphemy allegation and rally the crowd that killed him, Dawn reported. Khan's sister, quoted by Al Jazeera, said: “He was a humanist and was only standing up to corruption in his school, and he was accused of blasphemy.”
The verdict
An anti-terrorism court sitting at Haripur delivered its verdict in February 2018. As Dawn reported, the court sentenced one man, identified as the person who opened fire on Khan, to death; handed life imprisonment to five others; and gave three-year prison terms to 25 more. Twenty-six defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.
The court described the killing as premeditated murder, citing the investigation's finding that the plan to have Khan “put out of the way” had been discussed a month before he died, according to Dawn. Members of Khan's family said the sentences did not match the scale of the crime; his brother told Al Jazeera that the family had wanted all of the suspects convicted.
Why the case is still cited
Rights groups and researchers point to the killing as an example of how an unverified accusation, amplified among a connected group, can move within hours from rumour to lethal violence. The case is frequently referenced in analyses of how blasphemy allegations spread and escalate in Pakistan, including a review of the verdict by Global Voices. Investigators had cleared Khan of the charge that cost him his life; the courts had confirmed he was killed over an accusation that was never substantiated.