ISLAMABAD: The wife of a Sri Lankan man who was lynched and publicly burned over alleged blasphemy in eastern Pakistan on Friday has called on Pakistani and Sri Lankan leaders to ensure justice, saying her husband was an innocent man who was “brutally murdered” after years of working in Pakistan.
A mob of hundreds of enraged Muslims descended on a garment factory in the district of Sialkot in Punjab province after Priyantha Kumara, the Sri Lankan manager of the factory, was accused of blasphemy for removing posters bearing the name of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The mob grabbed Kumara, lynched him and publicly burned the body, police told media after the killing.
Speaking to the BBC on Saturday, Kumara’s grieving wife, Niroshi Dasaniyake, pleaded with both Pakistani and Sri Lankan leaders to ensure justice for her slain husband.
“My husband was an innocent man,” she told BBC Sinhala. “I found out from the news that after working abroad for so long he had been brutally murdered. I saw on the Internet how inhuman the killing was. I appeal to the Sri Lankan president and the Pakistani prime minister and president to conduct a fair investigation so my husband and our two children get justice.”
Nilushi Dissanayake the wife of Sri Lankan factory manager who was beaten to death and set ablaze by a mob in Pakistan, stands next to his graduation photograph at her residence in Ganemulla near Colombo on December 5, 2021. (AFP)
Sri Lankan news website, Newswire, quoted Colombo’s High Commissioner in Pakistan, Vice Admiral Mohan Wijewickrama, as saying arrangements were being made to transport Kumara’s remains from Lahore to Colombo on a special flight on Monday.
Few issues are as galvanizing in Pakistan as blasphemy, and even the slightest suggestion of an insult to Islam can supercharge protests and incite lynching. Perpetrators of violence in the name of blasphemy often go unpunished.
But police said on Saturday they had arrested over 230 people in the case and filed police reports against 900 workers of the garment factory, Rajco Industries, in Sialkot, Dawn newspaper reported. Uggoki Station House Officer (SHO) Armaghan Maqt lodged the cases under several sections of the Pakistan Penal Code and the Anti-Terrorism Act.
“The applicant admitted that the protesters had slapped, kicked, punched and hit Mr.Kumara with sticks in his presence, and dragged him out of the factory on Wazirabad Road where he died,” Dawn said. “They then set the body on fire. The SHO said he was helpless in front of the mob owing to shortage of personnel.”
Sialkot police are currently conducting raids in Sialkot city, its adjoining villages as well as in the Sambrial, Daska and Pasrur tehsils to arrest the 900 suspects against whom cases have been registered.
“Police are trying to identify the culprits through CCTV footage from the factory cameras as well as video clips that have gone viral on social media,” Dawn reported.
On Saturday, a report in Geo News said the Sri Lankan factory manager was not very popular with workers at the factory who had lodged several complaints against him with the owners of the facility.
Sharing the findings of the criminal investigation in the case, Geo News said Kumara “worked as an honest general manager” and looked after production work at the factory and strictly implemented regulations.
“On the day of the incident, Priyantha Kumara visited the production unit where he reprimanded the supervisor for not keeping the place clean,” the news channel reported, adding that it was supervisor who then allegedly instigated workers against the Sri Lankan manager.
“According to the police, Priyantha Kumara had asked workers to remove posters and stickers from the walls which were being painted,” Geo News said. “He also took off some posters himself including one with a religious inscription which led to an outcry. However, he apologized to people on the instructions of his factory owners.”
The investigation says Kumara did not know the local language and frequently faced communication problems at work.
While the issue had seemingly been settled after his apology, some workers continued to instigate people who then physically attacked the manager. Kumara ran to the roof of the factory to hide but was chased there by a group of angry workers who then killed him.
As his body was dragged by the mob onto the road, security guards deployed at the building left the facility without making an effort at rescue. The man’s corpse was then publicly set on fire in the presence of hundreds of people, many of whom filmed the incident on their cellphones and posted video clips on social media.
Kumara’s post-mortem was completed at Allama Iqbal Teaching Hospital in Sialkot, according to Dawn, with the report saying most of his body was burnt and several bones were broken due to the torture he suffered.
Sialkot Deputy Commissioner Tahir Farooq said Kumara’s body had been transported to a Lahore hospital in a Rescue 1122 ambulance amid tight security.
The Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has described the incident as “a day of shame” for his country.
“The lynching of a Sri Lankan citizen will not affect Pakistan-Sri Lanka bilateral relations as it was a work of a group of people and the nation or the country cannot be blamed for it,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said during a press conference on Saturday, adding that Islamabad had contacted the family of the deceased and would fulfil their wishes.
Qureshi also tweeted that he had spoken to his Lankan counterpart and offered condolences: “Spoke to my brother FM Gamini Lakshman Peiris of #SriLanka and expressed my deep grief and condolences.”
