For the first time ever, a Pakistan court will hear a Sikh man’s case  against Muslims for ‘blasphemy’. In this Islamic country, it’s usually the non-Muslims who are tried under this controversial law,.

Five people have appeared in a Pakistani court accused of blasphemy after a Sikh man complained they had desecrated his turban during a scuffle over a delayed bus, says a media report in the Al Jazeera channel.

The men, all Muslims, appeared for the first hearing on Tuesday in Chichawatni in northern Punjab province, police said.

Mahindar Pal Singh, a 29 year old , said he went to police after the incident on Sunday during a journey from Faisalabad to Multan.

He said the disturbance arose after he and other passengers complained when their bus broke down.

Singh told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper that the driver managed to start the bus but the vehicle took more than five hours to reach the next terminal. Due to the slow speed of the bus, Singh said, he and other passengers, complained to the company’s staff and demanded an alternative vehicle for the onward journey.

“The staff misbehaved, pushed me and threw my turban, which is very sacred, away,” he told AFP news agency.

“They desecrated my religious symbol, so I decided to lodge a blasphemy case.”

According to Pal, the police station officer “repeatedly requested [him] not to make the complaint and was acting like the lawyer more than the policeman”.

Singh said the turban was considered sacred in the Sikh religious code and throwing it on the ground was tantamount to desecration.

According to some affected passengers, Singh told police, that reached the bus terminal following the brawl, that it was a case of desecration and since he was a Pakistani national the attackers should be booked under blasphemy law.

A senior police official said five of the attackers — terminal manager Baqir Ali, Rashid Gujar, Faiz Alam, Shakeel and Snawal had been booked .

Blasphemy carries the death penalty .It is an extremely sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where people generally from the minority community – Christians, Hindus. And so on,  have been targeted under the controversial law.

Human Rights activists have criticised the country’s blasphemy laws, which they say are often used to carry out personal vendettas against minorities.

Salman Taseer, a provincial governor who backed a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, was gunned down in 2011 by his bodyguard, who was hanged for the crime in February this year.

The Pakistan government has been under intense pressure Islamic hardliners not to change the law, even though it  has been criticised as biased against minorities.

It will be interesting to see how a non-Muslim will get justice, now that he has used the same law to accuse Muslims of desecrating his ‘sacred symbols’. Will the court announce the death sentence? Or will the case be thrown out?

  blasphemy, court, naked truth, pakistan