The vigilante murder of Mashal Khan on charges of alleged blasphemy sent a chill down the spine of most people in Pakistan. The gruesome way in which a mob was assembled at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan and his body desecrated felt like a moment of reckoning. Calls for justice for the bright young student resounded but the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government continued to flounder over how to proceed. Finally, a JIT into the matter was announced, which has now shared its conclusions after interviews with dozens of students and administrators. It has now been established beyond any doubt that this was a premeditated murder and Mashal was the victim of a conspiracy between administrators, teachers and students. The report into his lynching shows that the mob that beat and shot him did not spontaneously assemble itself in anger at Mashal’s supposed acts of blasphemy. In fact, the report conclusively states that there is no evidence at all to ever suggest Mashal committed blasphemy. The true motive of his murderers was to silence Mashal because they saw his activities on campus as a threat to their power. According to the report, the main plotters were the president and other members of the employees union along with members of the Pakhtun Students Federation. It is astounding first that fellow students and those whose job it is to educate them could so openly discuss murdering one of their own in cold blood, and second that among the plotters no one had second thoughts or informed the police. Mashal had been a crusader for students’ rights and had even given an interview to a local television station revealing how students were exploited and how criminal activities such as drug dealing and illegal possession of weapons were rife on campus. The blasphemy charges were concocted to give cover to the murder they were ready to commit to matter what. On the day of the killing, a security officer at the university who seems to have been in on the conspiracy riled up the mob by saying all blasphemers should be killed. The professors present at the scene did not call the police and the assistant registrar made matters worse by sending a campus-wide notification at that exact moment saying that Mashal and two other students had been rusticated on charges of blasphemy.
Of the 50 people identified in the JIT report as being responsible for Mashal’s lynching, 47 are now in police custody. Two of the three are in hiding and it is believed they may have been helped by political parties in the city. In establishing the chain of responsibility, the role of political parties and law-enforcement officials also needs to be investigated. Most of the students responsible for the lynching belonged to the PSF, which is the student wing of the ANP, and a member of the PTI was also part of the mob. The Jamaat-e-Islami, like the other political parties, had nothing to say about the lynching until the public outcry forced them to begrudgingly condemn it. It is also clear that the police did nothing to prevent the lynching and may even have abetted it. Without outright naming the police as allowing the lynching to take place, the report says another high-level inquiry will be needed to investigate possible negligence or collusion. It does say that the riot police decided not to take any action for some reason and that the chief security officer did not coordinate with the university. The picture that is painted in the report is of everyone with power on the campus joining forces to eliminate one helpless student that it considered a threat. After the JIT report came out, Mashal’s father said that the case should be moved from Mardan to the Peshawar High Court. The JIT report shows that some of the most powerful forces in Mardan were arrayed against Mashal which is why this request should be immediately granted. It has become clear that getting justice will be impossible in a city that seemed determined to kill Mashal and then cover up what happened.