Pakistani police arrest a man accused of insulting the Quran and save him from being lynched by mob

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Police arrested a man accused of insulting Islam's holy book, the Quran, in deeply conservative northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday after being alerted that a mob wanted to lynch him, police said.

The man, identified as Humayun Ullah, was arrested in Khazana, an area on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police officer Nasir Khan said.

He said the man was arrested as a mob was trying to grab him in a street.

Video posted on social media showed hundreds of people blocking a road near a police station and demanding the man be handed over to them. Gunshots were also heard near the police station, where the man was being held for questioning.

Khan said the man allegedly made derogatory remarks about the Quran during a heated argument with his brother at the family's home. He said some of the demonstrators threw stones at the police station and threatened to burn it and harm officers if the man was not handed over to them.

Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death — though authorities have yet to carry out a death sentences for blasphemy.

The arrest Tuesday came two months after the government said police had orchestrated the killing of a doctor who was in custody after being accused of blasphemy in southern Sindh province. The doctor had voluntarily surrendered following assurances from officers that he would be given a chance to prove his innocence.

In November 2021, a mob burned a police station and four police posts in northwestern Charsadda district after officers refused to hand over a mentally unstable man accused of desecrating the Quran.