Student kills professor over mixed reception

A Pakistani student was arrested on Wednesday ater stabbing his professor to death for organising a mixed-gender reception at a government college, police said.

Associate Professor Khalid Hameed was killed on Wednesday on the campus of Sadiq Egerton College in the southern city of Bahawalpur, a local police official said.

“The professor had organised a gender mix reception for the new students and the event was supposed to take place tomorrow, on Thursday,” he said.

“Apparently, the accused has no link to any religious group but we are investigating about his past and the reasons behind his mindset,” local police official Farhan Hussain said. He added that the motive given by the alleged atacker was Hameed’s decision to hold the party.

The student, Khateeb Hussain, was in policy custody and was being charged with murder, police said.

According to the report registered with the police, a copy of which was seen by AFP, the student had shouted that he killed the professor because he was “spreading obscenity.”

“The gender mix reception is against the teachings of Islam and I had warned him to stop it,” he was quoted as saying in the report filed with the police. The professor’s son Waleed Khan, who was with him at the time of the incident, said the student was waiting for his father.

“As my father was about to step into his office, the guy atacked him with a knife, hiting him at his head and stomach,” he said.

“My father then fell down and I rushed to him, the student held his knife and started shouting ‘I have killed him, I had told him that a gender mix reception is against Islam’,” he said.

“We took him to hospital but he had already died,” he said. He said the student dropped his knife and the guards arrested him.the Punjab provincial government said on Twiter that the student had been arrested and the chief minister had sought a report from the police.

Mixed-gender events are not uncommon in Pakistan’s educational institutions but they come with more restrictions in government-owned colleges than in private ones.

Recently, a government university in Punjab issued a dress code barring female students from wearing tops with a deep neckline, sleeveless shirts, tights, skinny jeans or capri pants.

In many government universities there is a ban on students siting as “couples” and “inappropriate” interaction between male and female students.