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ISLAMABAD —Police in southern Pakistan reported Thursday that a doctor facing allegations of blasphemy against Islam was killed in a shootout during a raid intended to arrest him.
The overnight alleged extrajudicial killing of Shah Nawaz in the province of Sindh marked the second instance within a week in which Pakistani police fatally shot a blasphemy suspect.
Nawaz, a Muslim, was an employee at the main public hospital in his native Umerkot district. He was dismissed from his job on Tuesday after area residents accused him of "desecrating" the Prophet Muhammad by sharing "blasphemous posts" on Facebook earlier in the week.
The doctor rejected the charges and disowned the social media account. A police complaint was subsequently filed against him, however, amid citywide violent protests by religious party activists demanding his immediate arrest.
An area police officer, Niaz Khoso, alleged that Nawaz and another "armed" man were fleeing on a motorcycle to evade arrest, refused to stop at a checkpoint and instead opened fire on police. The ensuing exchange of gunfire led to the death of the blasphemy suspect, Khoso said.
Such official claims are often widely disputed by critics, who point to a highly politicized and corruption-plagued Pakistani police force with a history of staged encounters.
Last week, a police officer in the southwestern city of Quetta shot and killed a 52-year-old hotel owner who was being held in custody on blasphemy allegations. The victim, Abdul Ali, a Muslim, was arrested a day earlier for allegedly posting derogatory remarks on social media about the Prophet Muhammad. His killing inside the police lockup triggered outrage and calls for bringing the shooter to justice.
Ali's family announced at a news conference together with their tribal elders late on Wednesday, though, that they had "forgiven" the police officer and would not press charges "in the name of God." One of the elders stated that their tribe had decided to disown the slain man for disrespecting the prophet of Islam.
The country's independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, or HRCP, said that it was "gravely concerned by the alleged extrajudicial" killings of Shah and Ali.
"This pattern of violence in cases of blasphemy, in which law enforcement personnel are allegedly involved, is an alarming trend," the watchdog stated in a Thursday statement.
The HRCP urged authorities to conduct an independent inquiry to ascertain who was responsible for the doctor's death in Umarkot and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in majority-Muslim Pakistan, where mere allegations have led to mobs lynching scores of suspects, even some in police custody. Insulting the Quran or the Prophet is punishable by death under the country's blasphemy laws, although no one has ever been officially executed.
In June, a 73-year-old Pakistani man from the minority Christian community died in a hospital a week after being violently attacked by a mob in Pakistan's Punjab province following accusations he insulted Islam. Days later, on June 20, a Muslim man from Punjab was visiting the scenic northwestern Swat Valley when a mob violently lynched him for allegedly desecrating Islam's holy book, the Quran.
The laws are persistently under international scrutiny, with critics blaming them for the recent rise in blasphemy allegations and mob lynching of suspects in Pakistan.
A new report released on Monday stated that the blasphemy laws are being significantly misused, with many defendants facing baseless accusations, protracted legal battles, and lengthy pretrial prison time, as judges tread carefully to avoid offending religious groups.
The findings by the U.S.-based Clooney Foundation for Justice backed long-running local and international rights groups' concerns that the strict blasphemy laws are often misused to settle personal vendettas or to persecute Pakistani minority communities.
Hundreds of blasphemy suspects, mostly Muslims, are languishing in jails in Pakistan because fear of retaliation from religious groups deters judges from moving their trials forward.