Asia Bibi's brother-in-law's body found with throat slit

Asia Bibi’s brother-in-law’s body found with throat slit

Author: Web Desk

Younus, the brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian woman who spent years in jail before her acquittal, was killed in Sheikhupura city of Punjab province in Pakistan on Monday.

Younas Masih, 50, the father of two was married to Najma Bibi, the younger sister of Asia Bibi. The victim’s brother George Masih filed an FIR with the police, where he has accused Najma Bibi of conspiring to kill her husband with the help of Irfan Dogar, a local Muslim.

Punjab police operations DIG Sohail Akhtar Sukhera told that Sheikhupura police have arrested Najma Bibi and Irfan Dogar. He said they had confessed to the crime and the victim’s body had been sent to a morgue for an autopsy. Quoting the accused who ‘confessed’ to committing the crime, he said they killed Younus on Eid day at around 3 pm and dumped his body in the drain in a bid to conceal their crime.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the influential governor of Punjab was assassinated after he made headlines by appealing for the pardon of Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death.

A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law.

Asia Bibi is now living in exile after the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence presented before it in October 2018. Recounting the severe inhuman conditions of eight years spent on death row for false blasphemy charges and about the pain of exile, Asia Bibi recently broke her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her.”You already know my story through the media,” she said in the book. “But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life,” she said. “I became a prisoner of fanaticism,” she said. In prison, “tears were the only companions in the cell”.