Sri Lankan airliner brings home remains of national lynched in Pakistan over alleged blasphemy
A SriLankan Airlines flight landed at Colombo Airport on Monday evening with the remains of Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan factory manager who worked in Pakistan and was lynched by a Muslim mob last week over blasphemy allegations.
A mob last Friday attacked and killed Kumara, who had worked at a garment factory in the city of Sialkot in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The crowd also publicly burned the Sri Lankan national’s body over what police have said are accusations he desecrated religious posters.
Blasphemy is considered a deeply sensitive issue in Pakistan and carries the death penalty. International and domestic rights groups say accusations of blasphemy have often been used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores.
Kumara’s remains were transported from the Pakistani city of Lahore via SriLankan Airlines flight UL-186 at 12:30 p.m. The flight landed in Colombo at around 5 p.m. where Kumara’s remains were received by Tanvir Ahmed, Pakistan’s acting high commissioner in Colombo, along with other Sri Lankan officials.
“On the instructions of Prime Minister Imran Khan, I am at the airport to send the mortal remains of Priyantha Kumara to Sri Lanka with complete state protocol,” Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, special adviser to the Pakistani prime minister on religious harmony, told Arab News before the flight took off.
Ashrafi vowed that all those involved in Kumara’s murder would be brought to justice. “PM Khan is himself overseeing all developments in the investigation,” he said, adding that those involved in the crime not only used religion but “defamed it too.”
On Monday, a delegation of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party met with Sri Lankan High Commissioner Mohan Wijewickrama in Islamabad and condoled with him over Kumara’s death.
“This was a horrific murder, and we are concerned (with) the way it was carried out. But we have seen that the government of Pakistan has immediately taken all possible actions at the highest level, and
they have assured the family and … us that very stringent actions will be taken against the culprits,” Wijewickrama told the delegates.
“A large number of people have been arrested and remanded. So, we believe that the government of Pakistan is very sincere on this issue.”
Pakistani leaders, including the prime minister and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, have said Islamabad is working closely with Sri Lankan authorities on the case. Top Pakistani leaders have promised accountability after the Sri Lankan leadership demanded Islamabad ensure justice in the case.
Few issues are as galvanizing in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestions of an insult to Islam have been known to supercharge protests and incite lynching. Perpetrators of violence in the name of blasphemy often go unpunished.
But a day after the killing, police said they had arrested over 230 people in the case and filed police reports against 900 workers of the garment factory, Rajco Industries, in Sialkot. Uggoki Station House Officer Armaghan Maqt lodged the cases under several sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and the AntiTerrorism Act.