Aqibullah Shah was running along with two other young men in a certain direction.

When people along the way asked him why he was in such a hurry, he replied, “Wait for
a while and you will get the answer.”
Soon, they entered a classroom. The teacher there asked them as to why they had
suddenly barged in. Aqibullah pointed towards a student sitting in the classroom and
said, “He has committed blasphemy.”
Aqibullah and his two fellows then started beating up that student.
This incident took place at about 10.30 am on November 4 , 2020 in Kohat University of
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Science and Technology. Their victim was a seventh semester student at the
Information Technology Department there. He was accused of having made
blasphemous remarks on Facebook about Islamic personages.
“A person held me in his arms while the other was hitting me with punches and slaps. A
third person was making a video of this entire episode,” the victims tells Sujag in an
interview at a location he does not want disclosed.
The teacher in the classroom and other students helped him escape. They shifted him
surreptitiously to the vice-chancellor’s office. A large number of students, in the
meanwhile, were gathering in the university. They were all enraged. Some of them
started collecting petrol from the motorcycles parked in the university so as to set fire to
the student accused of blasphemy. They were searching every passing vehicle in order
to find and kill him.
Some members of the university management hid the student in a washroom for a
while. Then they hid his face behind a surgical mask, put a shawl around him, laid him
out in the backseat of a car and got him out of the university.
A member of the university management tells Sujag that the situation was extremely
tense at that time. “A frenzied mob was planning to get hold of the student and torch
him,” he says. “But we somehow managed to save his life.”
Aqibullah, leader of the mob that day, is the university president of Insaf Student
Federation, student wing of the ruling political party, Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf. He
tells Sujag in an ominous tone: “if I had caught that student that day, he would have
never gotten out of the university alive.”
His victim, although alive, is still facing a lot of problems.
His trouble started on September 4 , 2020, when, at about 10 pm, his father was
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chatting with his friends not very far from his house in a suburb of Kohat. He suddenly
saw police cars moving toward his street and called his elder son on the phone to find
as to who the police were after. He was told that they, indeed, were looking for his own
house.  
He hurried towards his home where about a score policemen, and some policewomen,
were arresting his younger son. He was later told at a local police station that his son
was alleged to have committed blasphemy in a Facebook post.
Next day, the police presented his son in a local court which, after an initial hearing,
ordered that he be released on bail six days later. He came back home on September
12 .
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After his return from the imprisonment, he needed to appear in the final examination for
the sixth semester so the university management made a special arrangement for him.
They declared a school located near his residence as his examination hall so that he
could take his exam in a safe environment.
On October 26 , he requested the vice-chancellor and the head of the Information
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Technology Department to exempt him from attending classes in person for the seventh
semester because of the threats to his life. After he did not get any response from them,
he decided to go to university himself and reached there on November 3 . rd

Only a day later, he was attacked.  

But neither the university nor the police took any action against the students who
assaulted him. Instead, he was thrown out of the university.
He says: “The assailants and the university management have destroyed my future. I
cannot go out of my house because my photos are everywhere on social media. Even if
I go to Kohat, people will recognize me. I don’t know what they will do to me then.”
He demands the government take action against those who have put both his
educational career and life at a permanent risk.
This report was originally published in Urdu and has been translated by
Muhammad Faisal.
Click here to read in urdu.