ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani cleric who accused a Christian girl of blasphemy was remanded in custody on Sunday after police arrested him on suspicion of evidence-tampering and desecrating the Quran.The girl, Rimsha, has been held in prison since she was arrested in the poor Islamabad suburb of Mehrabad more than two weeks ago accused of burning papers containing verses from the Quran, in breach of Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws.
- Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti (right photo), the imam of the mosque in Rimsha’s area who first handed over evidence, was arrested on Saturday after his assistants said he had added pages from the Quran to the burnt papers to strengthen the case against the girl.
- “The imam was arrested after his deputy Maulvi Zubair and two others told a magistrate he added pages from the Quran to the burnt pages brought to him by a witness,” police investigator Munir Hussain Jaffri said.
- Zubair and the two others, Mohammad Shahzad and Awais Ahmad, said they had urged Chishti not to interfere with the papers, Jaffri said.
- “They protested that he should not add something to the evidence and he should give the evidence to the police as he got it and should not do this,” Jaffri said.
On August 24, Chishti told AFP he thought Rimsha had burned the pages deliberately as part of a Christian “conspiracy” to insult Muslims, and said action should have been taken sooner to stop what he called their “anti-Islam activities” in Mehrabad.Jaffri said the cleric was arrested at his home on Saturday under the blasphemy law.
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