Pakistan’s Supreme Court has overturned the death sentences of the last three men convicted in the 2014 lynching of a Christian couple who were burned alive after being falsely accused of blasphemy. A three-member bench led by Justice Malik Shahzad Ahmad Khan acquitted the men on July 9, ruling that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt because of inconsistent witness testimony and weak evidence, according to Christian attorney Basharat Masih, who attended the hearing. The court also rejected the Punjab government’s appeal against the Lahore High Court’s earlier acquittal of 102 other defendants; a detailed judgment has not yet been issued.
On November 4, 2014, Shahzad Masih and his pregnant wife, Shama Bibi, parents of three young children, were beaten by a mob and burned alive in a brick kiln in Kot Radha Kishan, Kasur District, after being accused of desecrating pages of the Quran. Police initially named 660 suspects. An anti-terrorism court later sentenced five men to death and eight others to prison, but the Lahore High Court acquitted two of the five before the Supreme Court’s latest ruling acquitted the remaining three: Muhammad Irfan, Mehdi Khan and Muhammad Riaz Kumbh.
Masih said the bench opened by expressing sympathy for the victims’ family but stressed it was bound to rule strictly on legal merits. He said the court found major inconsistencies among police records, witness statements and relatives’ testimony, including unclear descriptions of each defendant’s role. Irfan’s name was missing from the original police report and only emerged later in an officer’s testimony, while relatives denied ever naming him. Similar contradictions surrounded allegations against Riaz Kumbh, accused of inciting the mob and assaulting the couple with Mehdi Khan. The court also noted that kiln owner Yousaf Gujjar, named in the initial report, was later acknowledged by the family not to have been present during the attack.
A government law officer argued the convictions should stand given that the killing was undisputed and the case involved terrorism charges, but the bench asked how convictions could hold without reliable evidence tying the accused to the crime. Masih called the acquittals heartbreaking for the family and Pakistan’s Christian community but said prosecutorial failures ultimately benefited the accused. Senior Christian lawyer Lazar Allah Rakha said the verdict exposed longstanding weaknesses in Pakistan’s criminal justice system, including inadequate trial preparation and witness examination.
In a joint statement, Bishop Samson Shukardin of the Pakistan Catholic Bishops’ Conference and NCJP national director Bernard Emmanuel said the ruling reflected a recurring pattern of impunity in violence against religious minorities, citing the 2009 Gojra attacks, the 2013 Joseph Colony case, and the 2024 mob killing of Nazir Masih Gill in Sargodha. The NCJP called for stronger protections for minorities and accountability for police who conduct weak investigations. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws remain widely criticized for being misused to settle disputes and target minorities, and Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List ranks Pakistan eighth among countries where Christians face the most severe persecution.
